Psychological Foundations of Education in a Diverse Society

General Description
The aim of the course is to prepare students to work with a wide range of individual student differences in skills, motivation, experience and development. The course will provide a synthesis of developmental and educational psychology focusing on cognitive, physical, social/emotional, and moral development of children and adolescences. The course will address theories of learning, instruction and motivation as well as classroom management and assessment.

Each student will be assigned a placement, in a learning assistant role, for up to one full day a week, at a local primary or secondary school on the basis of the age-range they plan to teach. Students are expected to discuss their observations and reflections of student motivation, development, instruction and classroom management.

Course Objectives
1. Academic Excellence, Critical Inquiry and Reflection

• A firm and critical understanding of the key issues in educational psychology, including learning processes, instructional design, developmental mechanisms, motivation, socio-cultural foundation of learning, individual differences, assessment, research methods, atypical development, social, moral and personality development
• Understand and assess major theoretical and research frameworks in educational psychology
• Compare and contrast methods of assessment and research for improving educational practices

2. Community and Service

• Identify effective classroom management strategies and through observation of assigned classroom/school, compare and contrast theory and practice of classroom management
• Understand strategies to engage and encourage the achievement of all students and through observation of assigned classroom/school, compare and contrast these strategies to observed practices
• Understand the importance of peers, family, teachers and others in the community within the contexts that influence the effectiveness of peer interaction, competition and cooperation in learning and interpersonal communications

3. Ethics, Values and Diversity

• Compare and contrast different theories of learning and the implications of each for teaching, assessment and learning
• Understand and evaluate strategies for encouraging the achievements of all students, focusing especially on multicultural diversity and students with special needs

Course requirements:

1. Active thoughtful participation in all classes (10%)
2. Two 4-6 pages essays incorporating observations from their placement: one essay will focus on students' academic performance and cognitive processes and the second will focus on motivation and socio-cultural environment and expectations. (15% each)
3. Presentation: a Power Point presentation based on one of the topics on the syllabus; addressing the key theoretical issues, research findings, essential ideas and implications discussed in the reading; you are expected to lead a class discussion relating the theoretical issues to teaching. (20%)
4. Interview Project: The interview projectis intended to enable you to learn about an individual student to enhance your understanding of students' learning, belief, motivation and development, etc. You will submit a proposal on your project that includes the topic of the project and the interview protocol. Detailed information regarding the structure of the project and the interview protocol will be provided.

You will be given detailed feedback on the proposal. After receiving the feedback, you will conduct a short interview with an individual student and write a 7-10 page paper discussing the result in reference to the theories, research and literature discussed in class. All students will deliver a 10-15 minute PowerPoint presentation on their interview project. (40%)