Week 1 Content

Required Resources

• Course Text: Woolfolk, A. (2013). Educational psychology (12th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

• • Chapter 1, “Learning, Teaching, and Educational Psychology” (pp. 2–27)
  • Chapter 2, “Cognitive Development ” (pp. 28–67)
  • Chapter 10, “The Learning Sciences and Constructivism” (p. 357)

• Walden Library “Tour”: Access the Walden Library from your myWalden page (or from http://library.waldenu.edu/). Then click on How Do I…? and then on General Library Help to access resources that will provide you with a “tour” of the Walden Library website.
  

Optional Resources

• PowerPoint presentations: The following PowerPoint presentations provide helpful information for using the Walden Library to find resources.

• • Advanced Keyword Searching: http://library.waldenu.edu/Documents/AdvSearchingSept2010.ppt
    This PowerPoint presentation demonstrates strategies and techniques to focus your results on relevant sources.

  • Boolean Operators AND, OR, & NOT: http://library.waldenu.edu/Documents/BooleanOperators.ppt
    This presentation expands your understanding of searching for resources in a way that saves you time by sorting through hundreds rather than thousands of hits.

  • Subject Searching: http://library.waldenu.edu/Documents/SubjectSearching.ppt
    This presentation explains how subject searching is different from keyword searches.

• Web site: ChangingMinds.org
  http://changingminds.org/index.htm

• Web site: Educational Psychology
  http://psychology.about.com/od/educationalpsychology/Educational_Psychology.htm

• Web site: Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
  http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/piaget.html

• Web site: Jean Piaget Society
  http://www.piaget.org/

• Web site: Vygotsky
  http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/trishvyg.htm

• Web site: Tools of the Mind: Philosophy
  
  1. Recent advances in neuroscience have influenced all areas of psychology. Consider some of the developments in brain research and how they inform the field of educational psychology. Then, in your own words, describe what brain-based education means. In reference to the Learning Resources, what are the implications of brain-based education in the classroom or in other learning settings?

  2. Yielding measurable results that can be replicated is both an important and sought-after benefit of conducting and applying research in educational psychology. Choose an educational question or topic you would like to research. Then, identify two different types of research studies (e.g., descriptive, experimental, microgenetic) you might use to investigate this topic, and explain the differences between the two. As applied to your topic, what knowledge or information would you hope to gain from each kind of study, and how would it inform the processes of teaching and learning?

  3. As you learned from Chapter 2 of the course text, Piaget and Vygotsky had different theories on cognitive development in children. In addition to their differences they also shared some commonalities in their thinking. Define Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective. Then explain one similarity between the two theorieshttp://www.toolsofthemin