Monday, September 1, 2008
Goals for TE 401
Well, I have to say that I didn't really know what to expect from TE401. There has been only one TE class that I have actually enjoyed a lot and that has been the educational psychology course TE150. I am interested in understanding how children learn. After graduation I hope to study the meta cognitive development of children ages 8-12. I would like to show that the original ages for what is believed to be the beginning of abstract thinking has actually been offset and is now occurring at an earlier age. Or, at least proving that environment changes in the school systems over the past few decades have altered what children know and how they are getting information to encode in hopes of bettering our present educational systems even more. So my goals for this class are purely to get a better understanding of how literacy is built up through the grades and the methods used for teaching. This way I will have a better knowledge of possible ways that children encode information while learning literacy concepts. And, hopefully I can find even more ways to teach kids that struggle in the conventional methods of teaching. Also, since what I want to do will require a lot of field work, I will need to know these concepts anyway.
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2 comments:
Your ultimate goal sounds very interesting (and I am very glad you shared it). Are you an ed psych major? Do you plan to do your internship next year? From reading the syllabus do you think you will be able to achieve this goal?
Your post definitely intrigued me for a couple of reasons :). Like you, I enjoyed TE 150's emphasis on educational psychology. I also believe that children's ability to think abstractly is often undervalued. I think that many of the readings for TE 401 have reinforced this argument-the most obvious example of this is the Leland article from last week.
However, I would like to know more of your thoughts about the child's respective environment pushing his/her abstract thinking. Obviously critical literacy readings would further a child's ability to think abstractly; on a similar note, utilizing the four perspectives that we discussed in class as well as the alternative assessments discussed in today's readings would develop a child's conceptual understanding. Are there any other strategies that you have in mind/have seen from your past field work?
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