How Does This Artifact Demonstrate Achievement of the Standard: Artifact #1 demonstrates this standard by exploring several different theories of adolescent development and how we as teachers can apply what we know about adolescent development to support our students and create developmentally appropriate learning experiences. This project was a collaborative effort that required our group to use technology to present our findings.

 

How Have These Artifacts Impacted My Understanding of Teaching/Learning?: This project provided an opportunity to apply what I have learned about theories of psychological development to better understand a group of adolescents (albeit fictional adolescents). Participating in this project helped me identify some concrete ways that the theories of adolescent development can be applied to aid instruction in the classroom. For example, according to Piaget's theories of development, high school-aged students are typically in the "formal operational" stage where they are able to form and test hypothesis and think about abstract and theoretical matters (Snowman et al., 2012). Students at this stage are ready for assignments that encourage deductive reasoning and utilize the scientific method to create and conduct experiments.

 

Strengths: One of my strengths is that my content knowledge helps me identify my students' misconceptions and use them as an opportunity for learning.

 

Areas for Improvement: Given that I am currently teaching in a school with a large population of English Language Learners, I am interested in learning more about how my students' language and culture influences their learning. I plan to observe some ESOL classes during my teaching internship to learn more about supporting the learning of this population of students.

 

References

Snowman, J., McCown, R., & Biehler, R. (2012). Psychology applied to teaching. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.