Generating the Top 20 Principles

• In Event: Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Pre-K–12 Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Many psychologists are concerned with the application of psychological science to education. Teaching, learning, and classroom practices are educational areas where psychology can make a very significant impact. Over the past several years, psychologists serving as members of APA’s Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education recognized that those preparing to enter schools as teachers (and in other educational support roles) and those educators already in schools might not have the benefit of the best psychology has to offer them. Candidates in preparation programs typically experience only one or two courses in psychology and generally these courses have a non-applied, theoretical focus and are not offered in conjunction with candidate field-clinical experience. For current practitioners, whatever psychology training they may have had would seem not ready at hand nor easily (re)discoverable as they fulfill their current roles. To provide educational practitioners, and those preparing to be so, with psychological science that might be of the greatest use to them, the Coalition embarked on a project, now known as “The Top 20 Principles from Psychology for PreK-12 Teaching and Learning” (please see http://www.apa.org/ed/schools/cpse/top-twenty-principles.pdf).
In this initiative, psychologists worked to identify and describe the twenty most important principles from psychological science for PreK-12 Education and then to translate them for use by practitioners. A systematic methodology for doing this was formulated and followed and its description can be found in the full report at the website cited above.
The psychologists working on this “Top Twenty” conceived of them in terms of five areas of classroom and psychological functioning which link to key questions that would be uppermost in the minds of teachers. The first eight principles (1-8) relate to cognition and learning and address the question of, “How do students think and learn?” The next four principles (9-12) discuss motivation and address the question, “What motivates students?” The following three (13-15) pertain to the social context and emotional dimensions that affect learning and address the query, “Why are social context, interpersonal relationships, and emotional well-being important to student learning?” The next two principles (16-17) relate to how context can affect learning and address the query, “How can the classroom best be managed?” Finally, the last three principles (18-20) discuss assessment and address the question, “How can teachers assess student progress?”
That these five areas were identified makes the point that student learning is a very complex process and one that is contingent on many and different aspects of behavioral and classroom functioning. Teacher attention to all these five dimensions, when interacting with students in the classroom, is more likely to lead to more successful teaching and learning and effective classrooms than a focus on only one or some is likely to yield.

Author

• Joan Lucariello, CUNY Graduate Ctr