10125 Educational Psychology

Credits: 6 intermediate credits in Education

Prerequisites: none

Authors: Avner Ziv, Naomi Ziv. The materials include a collection of 13 articles.

The course provides knowledge and understanding of psychological processes involved in education and learning.

Topics: Introduction – the area of psychology, and specifically the field of educational psychology, major issues in the field, methods of data collection, consumers; Motivational factors – internal factors which affect learning, such as motivation for achievement, curiosity, self-image – how they affect learning, how they develop, and ways to change them; Cognitive factors – the influence of cognitive factors on learning, theories relating to cognitive development, intelligence, memory and creativity; basic questions relating to these theories and their implementation in educational psychology; Social factors – social aspects of the classroom and their influence on learning including issues such as group and social cohesiveness, norms and conformity, cooperation and competition; Learning – major, long-standing theories of learning: behavioral theories and their application in teaching; cognitive-phenomenological theories; major learning processes which facilitate learning in school such as discovery learning and transference as opposed to factors which make learning difficult such as various kinds of learning disabilities; The school and the teacher – the teacher’s role and rationale for entering the profession, ways of dealing with discipline problems and violence, and various teaching methods.