1.5

Chapter 1 of James' book discussed how the science of psychology and the art of teaching can be related and how they are not related.  He discussed how science can inform teaching; however, teaching is an art and psychology cannot begin to tell teachers how to teach.  I feel like this is important when I am approaching teachers in the school setting.  Teachers already feel like there are many sources telling them how and what to teach (No Child Left Behind, Common Core, State Assessment, Accountability, etc.).  Building mutual respect can only happen if I can demonstrate how I respect the art of teaching.  For example, I was working with a teacher last week who leads reading intervention groups.  I was asking her for data on how a student was progressing with decoding skills.  She told me that she prefers to teach all aspects of reading together instead of isolating skills.  She also mentioned that she does not like to keep numerical progress data; however, she was able to provide accurate and invaluable anecdotal information about why the student was having difficulty.  While I need the data, I also need a teacher who is experienced enough in teaching reading to be able to watch a student read and report that the problem seems to be that the student does not read all the way across a word.  Both are important, but in the system, one is given much more weight.  This must be very frustrating for teachers.

Chapter 2 of the book discussed the stream of consciousness.  He discussed how our consciousness is always active, whether we are acutely aware of it or not.  James discussed how we have many fields of consciousness that are paying attention to many different inputs and outputs.  Everything from our physical sensations to our inner dialogue are all in different fields of consciousness.  When he was discussing how we have to choose what to pay attention to and which fields are related, I was reminded of working with students who have difficulty with sensory processing.  These students may be oversensitive or under-sensitive to different inputs, whether it be noise, touch, light, texture, temperature or any other sensory experience.  According to James, these students may be inadvertently paying to much attention to a particular field.  They may also have connected a field to something that it should not have been connected to, such as emotions.  People without difficulty with sensory processing are better able to filter sensory input and ignore excessive input; however, those with dysfunction in this area are unable to take their focus away from that particular field of consciousness. 

Chapter 3 discussed how knowledge is often measured by behavior.  In this chapter, James discussed how learning and knowledge is expected to shape behavior.  Not only is behavioral change the perceived outcome of learning, but positive behavioral change is what is expected.  James also discussed how everything we learn as humans (or animals) is used to adapt to our environment.  We cannot learn something and cease to be somehow changed by what we have learned even if that change is not apparent immediately.  This idea reminds me of the article we read earlier in the week.  See, I was changed by it.  One of the principles the authors mentioned was that learning is different at different points in time (Alexander, P., Schallert, D., & Reynolds, R., 2009).  I believe both authors are saying similar things.  We cannot ignore previous learning.  It affects how we interact with new learning even without us realizing it. 

Chapter 4 described education.  James described education as a learning of behaviors that are expected in the environment where the education is taking place.  He used many global examples of how education has a goal to shape educated people who will benefit a specific society.  It appeared that James believed that education was solely about behavioral change with little regard for more subtle learning.  I can see this in the differences between school psychology programs across the country.  When I was looking into graduate school and new fairly little about the field of school psychology and the many roles a school psychologist could fill, I was immediately struck by how different programs would be in different regions.  While some programs emphasize counseling and psychotherapy techniques, other emphasize assessment.  Some programs seem to attract more doctoral students who intend to go straight from graduate school into tenure track, research heavy, professor roles and some tend to attract students who want to be specialist level practitioners.  Each program is teaching a set of behaviors that will help the graduates be productive school psychologists in the area of the school.  While national mobility is possible through certification, it can be difficult for a school psychologist to work in an area outside of his or her graduate program due to differing behavioral expectations.  This phenomenon is a smaller scale example of what James was discussing in the chapter when he talked about schools in Germany versus schools in England.