As information becomes available, teachers of educational psychology must be ready to accept or resist change. This is especially true when it comes to the brain because as technologies advance, information about it is seeping into our lives. Deciding if, how much, and when this information fits into educational psychology coursework can be…

The belief systems with which teacher candidates enter their preservice programs powerfully shape their perceptions about teaching and learning. Data were gathered from 412 teacher candidates over the course of 5 academic years. Each of the participants posed 2 questions at the beginning of their course that they would like to be answered during…

Recently the analysis of social networks has proved successful for understanding many educational processes, and has led to dozens of papers on a variety of education-related topics and problems (Natriello, 2005; Watts, 2005), as well as to entire books explaining network research methods both to specialists and to wider audiences (e.g. Barbabasi,…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which preservice teachers understood and applied motivation concepts personally as learners and professionally for their future classroom practice. An assignment in an educational psychology class required the students to construct a motivational toolbox with five strategies for themselves…

This study examined relationships between students' use of their text and motivational constructs linked to self-regulation: need for cognition, goal orientation, and self-determination. Participants were 234 Educational Psychology students. In the Fall semester students were assigned one of two textbooks whereas in the Spring they were allowed to…

In the "hands on" mentoring program describing in this paper, cadets enrolled in a traditional undergraduate Educational Psychology course at the U.S. Air Force Academy) were mentored by Air Officer Commanders (AOCs) enrolled in a graduate level Educational Psychology course. This mentoring program was ideal for both groups of students, as the…

Preservice teachers (PTs) tend to enter teacher education programs with naive understandings of the nature of teaching. In order to enhance their development of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to be an effective educator, I designed an innovative Educational Psychology assignment in the practice of teaching. PTs (N=48) formed…

This study evaluates the effects of teacher candidates' having access to expert teachers' modeling analytic thinking as the experts read case studies used in teaching educational psychology. Videos which consisted of selected segments of multiple expert teachers thinking aloud were developed. In the first experiment, one of these videos was viewed…

This mixed methods study examined the relationships between students' learning goals, performance goals, study strategies, and test performances over a 14-week undergraduate course in educational psychology. Sixty undergraduate students provided goals at the beginning of the semester and reflected on their goals, study strategies, and test…

In 1912 William James proclaimed that psychology and pedagogy were unquestionably intertwined and equally important foundations of effective practice. Unfortunately, many students seeking degrees in education sometimes do not recognize the importance and applicability of educational psychology to pedagogy, especially if it is taught in a way that…

Critical dialogue skills are a beneficial tool for reflective educational practice. Pre-service teachers can learn to examine underlying biases and assumptions that influence many important aspects of educational practice. Critical dialogue skills are thus of particular importance for work with diverse students and their families. This paper…

Although the use of cases for instruction is increasingly popular in educational psychology courses for prospective teachers, systematic research on how to best use them is just beginning. This paper contributes to this growing area of research with a design-based research project that used a comparative case study design. Specifically, we…

Instructors have long used short descriptive stories such as vignettes as a tool to model, teach, and research behavior and understanding as well as to stimulate discussion and problem solving in learning situations. This article summarizes the results of a study comparing the effectiveness of two types of vignettes (evaluation and synthesis) as…

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the assessment chapters from four popular educational psychology texts. Teacher knowledge about assessment tools and how they support learning is critical to improving student outcomes. The goals of the analysis are to (a) differentiate author "voices" by looking at style and content choices, (b)…

In this article, the author discusses the similarities and differences among educational psychology textbooks. Similarities among textbooks are: (1) general topics covered; (2) organizational scheme; and (3) visual appeal. Differences among textbooks are: (1) specific content; (2) writing style; (3) pedagogy; (4) design; and (5) ancillary package.…