Educational Psychology Chapter 1/Articles Review

These four articles cover topics such as how teaching cannot be watered down to an exact science, how teachers adapt to their environment early in their careers, inequality in schools, and cross-state mobility of the teaching workforce. Chapter one of our textbook relates to these articles in an abstract way. I mean this by saying that though they both cover ways teachers should adapt and learn, the similarities get muddy after that point. In the textbook chapter one begins by describing educational psychology and its goal to understand students, then continues to explain how learning this subject makes us better teachers. The textbook does touch on scientific approaches to education as does one article, concluding by describing teaching as both an art and science, which should be adapted to by teachers. As far as where I stand, I believe this class is essential to being a teacher. Though teaching is not an exact science, an understanding of how students behave and why, helps us to reach them in ways we could not without that understanding. No matter what color our students are, we should expect nothing less than success from them in and out of the classroom. I expect every one of my students to either go to college or into a vocational career because of what they learn in school. Because of this I do disagree with any notion that the federal government should hold all states to strict standards, whether that be on the teachers or students. Education is typically better when ran by the states, with only necessary assistance from the federal government. When each state is allowed to set its own standards in both academics and vocation in regards to loose if any federal standards, the needs of students are better met in my opinion. After reading both the textbook and these articles I am excited to learn how students think as well as how to meet their individual needs in order to better myself and the education system as a whole.