District Deeds found a fascinating study by the American Psychological Association that provides a wealth of information to ALL PreK-12 San Diego Unified Stakeholders. The study identifies 20 principals for teaching and learning.

The Study is called: TOP 20 PRINCIPLES FROM PSYCHOLOGY FOR PreK–12 TEACHING AND LEARNING (pdf link)

The Top 20 are categorized into five areas of psychological functioning:

1. Cognition and learning: How do students think and learn?

2. Motivation: What motivates students?

3. Social context and emotional dimensions: Why are social context, interpersonal relations and emotional well-being important to student learning?

4. Context and learning: How can the classroom best be managed?

5. Assessment: How can teachers assess student progress?

The Top 20 Principals for Teaching and Learning identified are:

1. Students’ beliefs or perceptions about intelligence and ability affect their cognitive functioning and learning.

2. What students already know affects their learning.

3. Students’ cognitive development and learning are not limited by general stages of development.

4. Learning is based on context, so generalizing learning to new contexts is not spontaneous but instead needs to be facilitated.

5. Acquiring long-term knowledge and skill is largely dependent on practice.

6. Clear, explanatory, and timely feedback to students is important for learning.

7. Students’ self-regulation assists learning, and self-regulatory skills can be taught.

8. Student creativity can be fostered.

9. Students tend to enjoy learning and perform better when they are more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated to achieve.

10. Students persist in the face of challenging tasks and process information more deeply when they adopt mastery goals rather than performance goals.

11. Teachers’ expectations about their students affect students’ opportunities to learn, their motivation, and their learning outcomes.

12. Setting goals that are short term (proximal), specific, and moderately challenging enhances motivation more than establishing goals that are long term (distal), general, and overly challenging.

13. Learning is situated within multiple social contexts.

14. Interpersonal relationships and communication are critical to both the teaching– learning process and the social-emotional development of students.

15. Emotional well-being influences educational performance, learning, and development.

16. Expectations for classroom conduct and social interaction are learned and can be taught using proven principles of behavior and effective classroom instruction.

17. Effective classroom management is based on (a) setting and communicating high expectations, (b) consistently nurturing positive relationships, and (c) providing a high level of student support.

18. Formative and summative assessments are both important and useful but require different approaches and interpretations.

19. Students’ skills, knowledge, and abilities are best measured with assessment processes grounded in psychological science with well-defined standards for quality and fairness.

20. Making sense of assessment data depends on clear, appropriate, and fair interpretation

Interesting and informative to see how these concepts are evident in your children’s’ or students classroom in the San Diego Unified School District..