Educational Psychology 6e by Santrock

Educational Psychology 6e by Santrock is the 6th edition of the Educational Psychology: Theory and Application to Fitness and Performance textbook authored by John W. Santrock, University of Texas at Dallas and published by McGraw-Hill Education, New York, NY in 2018.

• Accommodation. Piagetian concept of adjusting schemas to fit new information and experiences.
• Achievement test. A test that measures what the student has learned or what skills the student has mastered.
• Action research. Research used to solve a specific classroom or school problem, improve teaching and other educational strategies, or make a decision at a specific location.
• Active listening. A listening style that gives full attention to the speaker and notes both the intellectual and emotional content of the message.
• Advance organizers. Teaching activities and techniques that establish a framework and orient students to material before it is presented.
• Algorithms. Strategies that guarantee a solution to a problem.
• Alternate-forms reliability. Reliability judged by giving different forms of the same test on two different occasions to the same group of students to determine how consistent their scores are.
• Altruism. An unselfish interest in helping another person.
• Amygdala. The seat of emotions in the brain.
• Analogy. A correspondence in some respects between otherwise dissimilar things.
• Androgyny. The presence of positive masculine and feminine characteristics in the same individual.
• Applied behavior analysis. Application of the principles of operant conditioning to change human behavior.
• Aptitude test. A type of test that is used to predict a student's ability to learn a skill or accomplish something with further education and training.
• Articulation disorders. Problems in pronouncing sounds correctly.
• Asperger syndrome. A relatively mild autism spectrum disorder in which the child has relatively good verbal language, milder nonverbal language problems, a restricted range of interests and relationships, and often engages in repetitive routines.
• Assimilation. Piagetian concept of the incorporation of new information into existing knowledge (schemas).
• Associative learning. Learning that two events are connected (associated).
• Atkinson-Shiffrin model. A model of memory that involves a sequence of three stages: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
• Attention. The focusing of mental resources.
• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A disability in which children consistently show one or more of the following characteristics over a period of time: (1) inattention, (2) hyperactivity, and (3) impulsivity.
• Attribution theory. The theory that individuals are motivated to discover the underlying causes of their own behavior and performance.
• Auditorium style. A classroom arrangement style in which all students sit facing the teacher.
• Authentic assessment. Evaluating a student's knowledge or skill in a context that approximates the real world or real life as closely as possible.
• Authoritarian classroom management style. A management style that is restrictive and punitive, with the focus mainly on keeping order in the classroom rather than instruction or learning.
• Authoritarian parenting. A restrictive and punitive parenting style in which there is little verbal exchange between parents and children; this style is associated with children's social incompetence.
• Authoritative classroom management style. A management style that encourages students to be independent thinkers and doers but still provides effective monitoring. Authoritative teachers engage students in considerable verbal give-and-take and show a caring attitude toward them. However, they still set limits when necessary.
• Authoritative parenting. A positive parenting style that encourages children to be independent but still places limits and controls on their actions, allows extensive verbal give-and-take, and is associated with children's social competence.
• Autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Also called pervasive developmental disorders, they range from the severe disorder labeled autistic disorder to the milder disorder called Asperger syndrome. Children with these disorders are characterized by problems in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviors.
• Autistic disorder. A severe developmental autism spectrum disorder that has its onset in the first three years of life and includes deficiencies in social relationships, abnormalities in communication, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior.
• Automaticity. The ability to process information with little or no effort.
• Backward-reaching transfer. Occurs when the individual looks back to a previous situation for information to solve a problem in a new context.
• Behavioral objectives. Statements that communicate proposed changes in students' behavior to reach desired levels of performance.
• Behaviorism. The view that behavior should be explained by observable experiences, not by mental processes.
• Belief perseverance. The tendency to hold on to a belief in the face of contradictory evidence.
• Best-work portfolio. A portfolio that showcases the student's most outstanding work.
• Between-class ability grouping (tracking). Grouping students based on their ability or achievement.
• Big Five factors of personality. Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (emotional stability).
• Bloom's taxonomy. Developed by Benjamin Bloom and colleagues; classifies educational objectives into three domains -- cognitive, affective, and psychomotor.
• Care perspective. A moral perspective that focuses on connectedness and relationships among people; Gilligan's approach reflects a care perspective.
• Case study. An in-depth look at an individual.
• Central tendency. A number that provides information about the average, or typical, score in a set of data.
• Centration. Focusing, or centering, attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others; characteristic of preoperational thinking.
• Cerebral palsy. A disorder that involves a lack of muscle coordination, shaking, or unclear speech.
• Character education. A direct approach to moral education that involves teaching students basic moral literacy to prevent them from engaging in immoral behavior and doing harm to themselves or others.
• Children who are gifted. Children with above-average intelligence (usually defined as an IQ of 130 or higher) and/or superior talent in some domain such as art, music, or mathematics.
• Chunking. Grouping, or "packing," information into "higher-order" units that can be remembered as single units.
• Classical conditioning. A form of associative learning in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response.
• Cloud computing. Delivery of services such as servers, storage, and applications to an organization's computers and devices through the Internet.
• Cluster style. A classroom arrangement style in which small numbers of students (usually four to eight) work in small, closely bunched groups.
• Cognitive apprenticeship. A relationship in which an expert stretches and supports a novice's understanding and use of a culture's skills.
• Cognitive-behavioral approaches. Changing behavior by getting individuals to monitor, manage, and regulate their own behavior rather than letting it be controlled by external factors.
• Cognitive moral education. An approach to moral education based on the belief that students should value things such as democracy and justice as their moral reasoning develops; Kohlberg's theory has served as the foundation for many cognitive moral education efforts.
• Collectivism. A set of values that support the group.
• Comparative advance organizers. Organizers that introduce new material by connecting it with the students' prior knowledge.
• Competence motivation. The idea that people are motivated to deal effectively with their environment, to master their world, and to process information efficiently.
• Concepts. Ideas that group objects, events, and characteristics on the basis of common properties.
• Concept map. A visual presentation of a concept's connections and hierarchical organization.
• Concrete operational stage. Piaget's third cognitive developmental stage, occurring between about 7 and 11 years of age. At this stage, the child thinks operationally, and logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought but only in concrete situations; classification skills are present, but abstract problems present difficulties.
• Concurrent validity. The relation between a test's scores and other criteria that are currently (concurrently) available.
• Confirmation bias. The tendency to search for and use information that supports our ideas rather than refutes them.
• Conservation. The idea that some characteristic of an object stays the same even though the object might change in appearance; a cognitive ability that develops in the concrete operational stage, according to Piaget.
• Constructed-response items. Items that require students to write out information rather than select a response from a menu.
• Construct validity. The extent to which there is evidence that a test measures a particular construct. A construct is an unobservable trait or characteristic of a person, such as intelligence, learning style, personality, or anxiety.
• Constructivist approach. A learner-centered approach to learning that emphasizes the importance of individuals actively constructing knowledge and understanding with guidance from the teacher.
• Content validity. A test's ability to sample the content that is to be measured.
• Continuity-discontinuity issue. The issue regarding whether development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity).
• Contracting. Putting reinforcement contingencies into writing.
• Control group. In an experiment, a group whose experience is treated in every way like the experimental group except for the manipulated factor.
• Conventional reasoning. The second, or intermediate, level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this level, individuals abide by certain standards (internal), but they are the standards of others such as parents or the laws of society (external). The conventional level consists of two stages: mutual interpersonal expectations, relationships, and interpersonal conformity (stage 3) and social systems morality (stage 4).
• Convergent thinking. Thinking with the aim of producing one correct answer. This is usually the type of thinking required on conventional intelligence tests.
• Cooperative learning. Learning that occurs when students work in small groups to help each other learn.
• Corpus callosum. The brain region where fibers connect the left and right hemispheres.
• Correlational research. Research that describes the strength of the relation between two or more events or characteristics.
• Creativity. The ability to think about something in novel and unusual ways and come up with unique solutions to problems.
• Criterion-referenced grading. A grading system that assigns a certain grade for a certain level of performance, regardless of the performance of other students.
• Criterion-referenced tests. Standardized tests in which the student's performance is compared with established criteria.
• Criterion validity. A test's ability to predict a student's performance as measured by other assessments or criteria.
• Critical thinking. Thinking reflectively and productively and evaluating the evidence.
• Cross-cultural studies. Studies that compare what happens in one culture with what happens in one or more other cultures; they provide information about the degree to which people are similar and to what degree behaviors are specific to certain cultures.
• Cue-dependent forgetting. Retrieval failure caused by a lack of effective retrieval cues.
• Culture. The behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a particular group of people that are passed on from generation to generation.
• Culture-fair tests. Tests of intelligence that are intended to be free of cultural bias.
• Decay theory. The theory that new learning involves the creation of a neurochemical "memory trace," which will eventually disintegrate. Thus, decay theory suggests that the passage of time is responsible for forgetting.
• Decision making. Evaluating alternatives and making choices among them.
• Declarative memory. The conscious recollection of information, such as specific facts or events that can be verbally communicated.
• Deductive reasoning. Reasoning from the general to the specific.
• Deep/surface styles. Involve the extent to which students approach learning materials in a way that helps them understand the meaning of the materials (deep style) or as simply what needs to be learned (surface style).
• Delay of gratification. Postponing immediate rewards in order to attain larger, more valuable rewards in the future.
• Dependent variable. The factor that is measured in an experiment.
• Descriptive statistics. Mathematical procedures that are used to describe and summarize data (information) in a meaningful way.
• Development. The pattern of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes that begins at conception and continues through the life span. Most development involves growth, although it also eventually involves decay (dying).
• Developmentally appropriate education. Education that focuses on the typical developmental patterns of children (age appropriateness) and the uniqueness of each child (individual appropriateness).
• Differentiated instruction. Involves recognizing individual variations in students' knowledge, readiness, interests, and other characteristics, and taking these differences into account when planning curriculum and engaging in instruction.
• Difficult child. A temperament style in which the child tends to react negatively, cries frequently, engages in irregular routines, and is slow to accept new experiences.
• Direct instruction approach. A structured, teacher-centered approach characterized by teacher direction and control, high teacher expectations for students' progress, maximum time spent by students on academic tasks, and efforts by the teacher to keep negative affect to a minimum.
• Discovery learning. Learning in which students construct an understanding on their own.
• Divergent thinking. Thinking with the aim of producing many answers to the same question. This is characteristic of creativity.
• Divided attention. Concentrating on more than one activity at a time.
• Domain theory of moral development. Theory that moral development includes the domains of social knowledge and reasoning.
• Down syndrome. A genetically transmitted form of intellectual disability due to an extra (47th) chromosome.
• Dual-process model. States that decision-making is influenced by two systems -- one analytical and one experiential -- that compete with each other; in this model, it is the experiential system -- monitoring and managing actual experiences -- that benefits adolescent decision making.
• Dyscalculia. Also known as developmental arithmetic disorder, this learning disability involves difficulty in math computation.
• Dysgraphia. A learning disability that involves difficulty in handwriting.
• Dyslexia. A severe impairment in the ability to read and spell.
• Early-later experience issue. Involves the degree to which early experiences (especially infancy) or later experiences are the key determinants of the child's development.
• Easy child. A temperament style in which the child is generally in a positive mood, quickly establishes regular routines, and easily adapts to new experiences.
• Ecological theory. Bronfenbrenner's theory that development is influenced by five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.
• Educational psychology. The branch of psychology that specializes in understanding teaching and learning in educational settings.
• Elaboration. The extensiveness of information processing involved in encoding.
• Emotions. Feelings, or affect, that occur when an individual is engaged in an interaction that is important to him or her, especially to his or her well-being.
• Emotional and behavioral disorders. Serious, persistent problems that involve relationships, aggression, depression, fears associated with personal or school matters, and other inappropriate socioemotional characteristics.
• Emotional intelligence. The ability to perceive and express emotion accurately and adaptively, to understand emotion and emotional knowledge, to monitor one's own and others' emotions and feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one's thinking and action.
• Empowerment. Providing people with intellectual and coping skills to succeed and make this a more just world.
• Encoding. The process by which information gets into memory.
• Encoding specificity principle. The principle that associations formed at the time of encoding or learning tend to be effective retrieval cues.
• Epigenetic view. Development is seen as an ongoing, bidirectional interchange between heredity and the environment.
• Epilepsy. A neurological disorder characterized by recurring sensorimotor attacks or movement convulsions.
• Episodic memory. The retention of information about the where and when of life's happenings.
• Equilibration. A mechanism that Piaget proposed to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next. The shift occurs as children experience cognitive conflict, or disequilibrium, in trying to understand the world. Eventually, they resolve the conflict and reach a balance, or equilibrium, of thought.
• Essay item. Test item that requires more writing than other formats but allows more freedom of response to questions.
• Essential questions. Questions that reflect the heart of the curriculum, the most important things that students should explore and learn.
• Ethnicity. A shared pattern of characteristics such as cultural heritage, nationality, race, religion, and language.
• Ethnographic study. In-depth description and interpretation of behavior in an ethnic or a cultural group that includes direct involvement with the participants.
• Executive attention. Involves planning actions, allocating attention to goals, detecting and compensating for errors, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.
• Executive function. An umbrella-like concept that encompasses a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain's prefrontal cortex. Executive function involves managing one's thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and exercise self-control.
• Experimental group. The group whose experience is manipulated in an experiment.
• Experimental research. Research that allows the determination of the causes of behavior and involves conducting an experiment, which is a carefully regulated procedure in which one or more of the factors believed to influence the behavior being studied is manipulated and all others are held constant.
• Expert knowledge. Also called subject matter knowledge; means excellent knowledge about the content of a particular discipline.
• Expository advance organizers. Organizers that provide students with new knowledge that will orient them to the upcoming lesson.
• Expressive language. The ability to use language to express one's thoughts and communicate with others.
• Extrinsic motivation. The external motivation to do something to obtain something else (a means to an end).
• Face-to-face style. A classroom arrangement style in which students sit facing each other.
• Failure syndrome. Having low expectations for success and giving up at the first sign of difficulty.
• Far transfer. The transfer of learning to a situation that is very different from the one in which the initial learning took place.
• Fixation. Using a prior strategy and thereby failing to examine a problem from a fresh, new perspective.
• Fluency disorders. Disorders that often involve what is commonly referred to as "stuttering."
• Formal operational stage. Piaget's fourth cognitive developmental stage, which emerges between about 11 and 15 years of age; thought becomes more abstract, idealistic, and logical.
• Formative assessment. Assessment during the course of instruction rather than after it is completed.
• Forward-reaching transfer. Occurs when the individual looks for ways to apply learned information to a future situation.
• Frequency distribution. A listing of scores, usually from highest to lowest, along with the number of times each score appears.
• Fuzzy trace theory. States that memory is best understood by considering two types of memory representations: (1) verbatim memory trace and (2) fuzzy trace, or gist. In this theory, older children's better memory is attributed to the fuzzy traces created by extracting the gist of information.
• Gender. The characteristics of people as males and females.
• Gender role. A set of expectations that prescribes how females or males should think, act, and feel.
• Gender schema theory. States that gender typing emerges as children gradually develop gender schemas of what is gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate in their culture.
• Gender stereotypes. Broad categories that reflect impressions and beliefs about what behavior is appropriate for females and males.
• Gender typing. Acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.
• Goodness of fit. The match between a child's temperament and the environmental demands the child must cope with.
• Grade-equivalent score. A score that indicates a student's performance in relation to grade level and months of the school year, assuming a 10-month school year.
• Grading. Translating descriptive assessment information into letters, numbers, or other marks that indicate the quality of a student's learning or performance.
• Gratitude. A feeling of thankfulness and appreciation, especially in response to someone doing something kind or helpful.
• Growth portfolio. A portfolio of work over an extended time frame (throughout the school year or longer) to reveal the student's progress in meeting learning targets.
• Guided discovery learning. Learning in which students are encouraged to construct their understanding with the assistance of teacher-guided questions and directions.
• Helpless orientation. A response to challenges and difficulties in which the individual feels trapped by the difficulty and attributes the difficulty to a lack of ability.
• Heuristics. Strategies or rules of thumb that can suggest a solution to a problem but don't ensure that it will work.
• Hidden curriculum. Dewey's concept that every school has a pervasive moral atmosphere even if it does not have a program of moral education.
• Hierarchy of needs. Maslow's concept that individual needs must be satisfied in this sequence: physiological, safety, love and belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization.
• High-road transfer. Applying information from one situation to another in a way that is conscious and effortful.
• High-stakes testing. Using tests in a way that will have important consequences for the student, affecting such decisions as whether the student will be promoted or be allowed to graduate.
• Hindsight bias. The tendency to falsely report, after the fact, having accurately predicted an event.
• Histogram. A frequency distribution in the form of a graph.
• Hostile environment sexual harassment. Occurs when students are subjected to unwelcome sexual conduct that is so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it limits the students' ability to benefit from their education.
• Humanistic perspective. A view that stresses students' capacity for personal growth, freedom to choose their destiny, and positive qualities.
• Hypothetical-deductive reasoning. Piaget's formal operational concept that adolescents can develop hypotheses to solve problems and systematically reach a conclusion.
• Identity achievement. The identity status in which individuals have explored meaningful alternatives and made a commitment.
• Identity diffusion. The identity status in which individuals have neither explored meaningful alternatives nor made a commitment.
• Identity foreclosure. The identity status in which individuals have made a commitment but have not explored meaningful alternatives.
• Identity moratorium. The identity status in which individuals are in the midst of exploring alternatives but have not yet made a commitment.
• Impulsive/reflective styles. Involves a student's tendency either to act quickly and impulsively or to take more time to respond and reflect on the accuracy of the answer.
• Incentives. Positive or negative stimuli or events that can motivate a student's behavior.
• Inclusion. Educating children with special education needs full-time in the regular classroom.
• Independent variable. The manipulated, influential, experimental factor in an experiment.
• Individualism. A set of values that give priority to personal rather than to group goals.
• Individualized education plan (IEP). A written statement that spells out a program specifically tailored for the student with a disability.
• Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This act spells out broad mandates for services to all children with disabilities, including evaluation and determination of eligibility, appropriate education and an individualized education plan (IEP), and education in the least restrictive environment (LRE).
• Inductive reasoning. Reasoning from the specific to the general.
• Indulgent parenting. A parenting style that includes parental involvement but places few limits or restrictions on children's behavior; linked with children's social incompetence.
• Information-processing approach. A cognitive approach in which children manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it. Central to this approach are cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and thinking.
• Instructional planning. A systematic, organized strategy for planning lessons.
• Instructional validity. The extent to which the assessment is a reasonable sample of what went on in the classroom.
• Intellectual disability. A condition with an onset before age 18 that involves low intelligence (usually below 70 on a traditional individually administered intelligence test) and difficulty in adapting to everyday life.
• Intelligence. Problem-solving skills and ability to adapt to and learn from experiences.
• Intelligence quotient (IQ). A person's mental age (MA) divided by chronological age (CA), multiplied by 100.
• Interference theory. The theory that we forget not because we actually lose memories from storage but because other information gets in the way of what we are trying to remember.
• Internet. The core of computer-mediated communication; a system of computer networks that operates worldwide.
• Intrinsic motivation. The internal motivation to do something for its own sake (an end in itself).
• Intuitive thought substage. The second substage of preoperational thought, lasting from about 4 to 7 years of age. Children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answer to all sorts of questions. They seem sure about their knowledge in this substage but are unaware of how they know what they know.
• Jigsaw classroom. A classroom in which students from different cultural backgrounds cooperate by doing different parts of a project to reach a common goal.
• Joplin plan. A standard nongraded program for instruction in reading.
• Justice perspective. A moral perspective that focuses on the rights of the individual; Kohlberg's theory is a justice perspective.
• Laboratory. A controlled setting from which many of the complex factors of the real world have been removed.
• Language. A form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols.
• Language disorders. Significant impairments in a child's receptive or expressive language.
• Lateralization. Specialization of functions in each hemisphere of the brain.
• Learning. A relatively permanent influence on behavior, knowledge, and thinking skills, which comes about through experience.
• Learning and thinking styles. Individuals' preferences in how they use their abilities.
• Learning disability. Difficulty in learning that involves understanding or using spoken or written language; the difficulty can appear in listening, thinking, reading, writing, and spelling. A learning disability also may involve difficulty in doing mathematics. To be classified as a learning disability, the learning problem is not primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities; intellectual disability; emotional disorders; or due to environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
• Least restrictive environment (LRE). A setting that is as similar as possible to the one in which children who do not have a disability are educated.
• Levels of processing theory. The theory that processing of memory occurs on a continuum from shallow to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory.
• Limbic system. Brain region that is the seat of emotions and in which rewards are experienced.
• Long-term memory. A type of memory that holds enormous amounts of information for a long period of time in a relatively permanent fashion.
• Low-road transfer. The automatic, often unconscious, transfer of learning to another situation.
• Mastery learning. Involves learning one topic or concept thoroughly before moving on to a more difficult one.
• Mastery orientation. A task-oriented response to difficult or challenging circumstances that focuses on learning strategies and the process of achievement rather than the outcome.
• Mean. The numerical average of a group of scores.
• Means-end analysis. A heuristic in which one identifies the goal (end) of a problem, assesses the current situation, and evaluates what needs to be done (means) to decrease the difference between the two conditions.
• Measures of variability. Measures that tell how much scores vary from one another.
• Median. The score that falls exactly in the middle of a distribution of scores after they have been arranged (or ranked) from highest to lowest.
• Memory. The retention of information over time, which involves encoding, storage, and retrieval.
• Memory span. The number of digits an individual can report back without error in a single presentation.
• Mental age (MA). An individual's level of mental development relative to others.
• Mental processes. Thoughts, feelings, and motives that cannot be observed by others.
• Mental set. A type of fixation in which an individual tries to solve a problem in a particular way that has worked in the past.
• Metacognition. Cognition about cognition, or "knowing about knowing."
• Metalinguistic awareness. Knowledge of language.
• Mindfulness. Being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life's everyday activities and tasks. Mindful students maintain an active awareness of the circumstances in their lives.
• Mindset. Dweck's concept that refers to the cognitive view individuals develop for themselves; individuals have one of two mindsets: fixed or growth.
• Mixed methods research. Involves research that blends different research designs or methods.
• Mode. The score that occurs most often.
• Montessori approach. An educational philosophy in which children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities and are allowed to move from one activity to another as they desire.
• Moral development. Development with respect to the rules and conventions of just interactions between people.
• Morphology. Refers to the units of meaning involved in word formation.
• Motivation. The processes that energize, direct, and sustain behavior.
• Multicultural education. Education that values diversity and includes the perspectives of a variety of cultural groups on a regular basis.
• Multiple-choice item. An objective test item consisting of two parts: a stem plus a set of possible responses.
• Myelination. The process of encasing many cells in the brain with a myelin sheath that increases the speed at which information travels through the nervous system.
• Naturalistic observation. Observation conducted in the real world rather than in a laboratory.
• Nature-nurture issue. Nature refers to an organism's biological inheritance, nurture to environmental influences. The "nature" proponents claim biological inheritance is the most important influence on development; the "nurture" proponents claim environmental experiences are the most important.
• Near transfer. The transfer of learning to a situation that is similar to the one in which the initial learning took place.
• Need for affiliation or relatedness. The motive to be securely connected with other people.
• Negative reinforcement. Reinforcement based on the principle that the frequency of a response increases because an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus is removed.
• Neglectful parenting. A parenting style of un-involvement in which parents spend little time with their children; associated with children's social incompetence.
• Neo-Piagetians. Developmental psychologists who believe that Piaget got some things right but that his theory needs considerable revision; they emphasize information processing through attention, memory, and strategies.
• Network theories. Theories that describe how information in memory is organized and connected; they emphasize nodes in the memory network.
• Neuroconstructivist view. Emphasizes that brain development is influenced by both biological processes and environmental experiences; the brain has plasticity and depends on experience; and brain development is linked closely with cognitive development.
• Nongraded program (cross-age). A variation of between-class ability grouping in which students are grouped by their ability in particular subjects, regardless of their age or grade level.
• Norm group. The group of individuals previously tested that provides a basis for interpreting a test score.
• Norm-referenced grading. A grading system based on comparing a student's performance with that of other students in the class or of other classes and other students.
• Norm-referenced tests. Standardized tests in which a student's score is interpreted by comparing it with how others (the norm group) performed.
• Normal distribution. A "bell-shaped curve" in which most of the scores are clustered around the mean and scores that are far above or below the mean are rare.
• Normal distribution. A symmetrical distribution, with a majority of scores falling in the middle of the possible range of scores and few scores appearing toward the extremes of the range.
• Objective tests. Tests that have relatively clear, unambiguous scoring criteria, usually multiple-choice tests.
• Observational learning. Learning that involves acquiring skills, strategies, and beliefs by observing others.
• Offset style. A classroom arrangement style in which small numbers of students (usually three or four) sit at tables but do not sit directly across from one another.
• Operant conditioning. A form of learning in which the consequences of behavior produce changes in the probability that the behavior will occur.
• Optimistic/pessimistic styles. Involves having either positive (optimistic) or negative (pessimistic) expectations for the future.
• Organization. Piaget's concept of grouping isolated behaviors into a higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system; the grouping or arranging of items into categories.
• Orthopedic impairments. Restricted movements or lack of control of movements, due to muscle, bone, or joint problems.
• Overconfidence bias. The tendency to have more confidence in judgments and decisions than we should have, based on probability or past experience.
• Participant observation. Observation conducted while the teacher-researcher is actively involved as a participant in the activity or setting.
• Pedagogical content knowledge. Knowledge about how to effectively teach a particular discipline.
• Percentile-rank score. The percentage of a distribution that lies at or below the score.
• Performance assessment. Assessment that requires creating answers or products that demonstrate knowledge and skill; examples include writing an essay, conducting an experiment, carrying out a project, solving a real-world problem, and creating a portfolio.
• Performance criteria. Specific behaviors that students need to perform effectively as part of an assessment.
• Performance orientation. A focus on winning rather than achievement outcome; success is believed to result from winning.
• Permissive classroom management style. A management style that allows students considerable autonomy but provides them with little support for developing learning skills or managing their behavior.
• Person-situation interaction. The view that the best way to conceptualize personality is not in terms of personal traits or characteristics alone, but also in terms of the situation involved.
• Personality. Distinctive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize the way an individual adapts to the world.
• Phonics approach. An approach that emphasizes that reading instruction should teach phonics and its basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds; early reading instruction should use simplified materials.
• Phonology. A language's sound system.
• Portfolio. A systematic and organized collection of a student's work that demonstrates the student's skills and accomplishments.
• Positive reinforcement. Reinforcement based on the principle that the frequency of a response increases because it is followed by a rewarding stimulus.
• Postconventional reasoning. The third and highest level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this level, morality is more internal. The postconventional level consists of two stages: social contract or utility and individual rights (stage 5) and universal ethical principles (stage 6).
• Pragmatics. The appropriate use of language in different contexts.
• Preconventional reasoning. The lowest level in Kohlberg's theory. At this level, morality is often focused on reward and punishment. The two stages in preconventional reasoning are punishment and obedience orientation (stage 1) and individualism, instrumental purpose, and exchange (stage 2).
• Predictive validity. The relation between test scores and the student's future performance.
• Prefrontal cortex. The highest level in the frontal lobes; involved in reasoning, decision making, and self-control.
• Prejudice. An unjustified negative attitude toward an individual because of the individual's membership in a group.
• Premack principle. The principle that a high-probability activity can serve as a reinforcer for a low-probability activity.
• Preoperational stage. The second Piagetian stage, lasting from about 2 to 7 years of age, when symbolic thought increases and operational thought is not yet present.
• Problem-based learning. Learning that emphasizes authentic problems like those that occur in daily life.
• Problem solving. Finding an appropriate way to attain a goal.
• Procedural memory. Nondeclarative knowledge in the form of skills and cognitive operations. Procedural memory cannot be consciously recollected, at least not in the form of specific events or facts.
• Program evaluation research. Research designed to make decisions about the effectiveness of a particular program.
• Project-based learning. Learning in which students work on real, meaningful problems and create tangible products.
• Prompt. An added stimulus or cue that is given just before a response that increases the likelihood the response will occur.
• Prototype matching. Deciding whether an item is a member of a category by comparing it with the most typical item(s) of the category.
• Public Law 94-142. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which required that all students with disabilities be given a free, appropriate public education and also provided the funding to help implement this education.
• Punishment. A consequence that decreases the probability that a behavior will occur.
• Qualitative research. Involves obtaining information using descriptive measures such as interviews, case studies, personal journals and diaries, and focus groups but not statistically analyzing the information.
• Quantitative research. Employs numerical calculations in an effort to discover information about a particular topic.
• Quid pro quo sexual harassment. Occurs when a school employee threatens to base an educational decision (such as a grade) on a student's submission to unwelcome sexual conduct.
• Random assignment. In experimental research, the assignment of participants to experimental and control groups by chance.
• Range. The distance between the highest and lowest scores.
• Raw score. The number of items a student answered correctly on the test.
• Receptive language. The reception and understanding of language.
• Reciprocal teaching. A learning arrangement in which students take turns leading a small-group discussion; can also involve teacher-scaffolded instruction.
• Rehearsal. The conscious repetition of information over time to increase the length of time information stays in memory.
• Reinforcement (reward). A consequence that increases the probability that a behavior will occur.
• Reliability. The extent to which a test produces a consistent, reproducible score.
• Response cost. Taking a positive reinforcer away from an individual.
• Rubric. A guide that lists specific criteria for grading and scoring academic papers, projects, or tests.
• Scaffolding. A technique that involves changing the level of support for learning. A teacher or more advanced peer adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the student's current performance.
• Schedules of reinforcement. Partial reinforcement timetables that determine when a response will be reinforced.
• Schema. Information -- concepts, knowledge, information about events -- that already exists in a person's mind.
• Schemas In. Piaget's theory, actions or mental representations that organize knowledge.
• Schema theories. Theories that when we construct information, we fit it into information that already exists in our mind.
• Script. A schema for an event.
• Selected-response items. Test items with an objective format in which student responses can be scored quickly. A scoring guide for correct responses is created and can be applied by an examiner or a computer.
• Selective attention. Focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant.
• Self-actualization. The highest and most elusive of Maslow's needs; the motivation to develop one's full potential as a human being.
• Self-efficacy. The belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes.
• Self-esteem. Also called self-image and selfworth, the individual's overall conception of herself or himself.
• Self-instructional methods. Cognitive-behavioral techniques aimed at teaching individuals to modify their own behavior.
• Self-regulatory learning. The self-generation and self-monitoring of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to reach a goal.
• Semantics. The meaning of words and sentences.
• Semantic memory. An individual's general knowledge about the world, independent of the individual's identity with the past.
• Seminar style. A classroom arrangement style in which large numbers of students (ten or more) sit in circular, square, or U-shaped arrangements.
• Sensorimotor stage. The first Piagetian stage, lasting from birth to about 2 years of age, when infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with motor actions.
• Sensory memory. Memory that holds information from the world in its original form for only an instant.
• Serial position effect. The principle that recall is better for items at the beginning and the end of a list than for items in the middle.
• Seriation. A concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along some quantitative dimension.
• Service learning. A form of education that promotes social responsibility and service to the community.
• Shaping. Teaching new behaviors by reinforcing successive approximations to a specified target behavior.
• Short-answer item. A constructed-response format in which students are required to write a word, a short phrase, or several sentences in response to a prompt.
• Short-term memory. A limited-capacity memory system in which information is retained for as long as 30 seconds, unless the information is rehearsed, in which case it can be retained longer.
• Situated cognition. The idea that thinking is located (situated) in social and physical contexts, not within an individual's mind.
• Slow-to-warm-up child. A temperament style in which the child has a low activity level, is somewhat negative, and displays a low intensity of mood.
• Social cognitive theory. Bandura's theory that social and cognitive factors, as well as behavior, play important roles in learning.
• Social constructivist approach. Emphasizes the social contexts of learning and that knowledge is mutually built and constructed; Vygotsky's theory exemplifies this approach.
• Social conventional reasoning. Focuses on conventional rules that have been established by social consensus to control behavior and maintain the social system.
• Social motives. Needs and desires that are learned through experiences with the social world.
• Social studies. The field that seeks to promote civic competence with the goal of helping students make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.
• Socioeconomic status (SES). A grouping of people with similar occupational, educational, and economic characteristics.
• Specific language impairment (SLI). Involves problems in language development that are not accompanied by other obvious physical, sensory, or emotional problems; in some cases, the disorder is called developmental language disorder.
• Speech and language disorders. A number of speech problems (such as articulation disorders, voice disorders, and fluency disorders) and language problems (difficulties in receiving information and expressing language).
• Splintered development. The circumstances in which development is uneven across domains.
• Split-half reliability. Reliability judged by dividing the test items into two halves, such as the odd-numbered and even-numbered items. The scores on the two sets of items are compared to determine how consistently the students performed across each set.
• Standard deviation. A measure of how much a set of scores varies on average around the mean of the scores.
• Standard score. A score expressed as a deviation from the mean; involves the standard deviation.
• Standardized tests. Tests with uniform procedures for administration and scoring. They assess students' performance in different domains and allow a student's performance to be compared with the performance of other students at the same age or grade level on a national basis.
• Standards-based tests. Tests that assess skills that students are expected to master before they can be promoted to the next grade or permitted to graduate.
• Stanine score. A 9-point scale that describes a student's performance.
• Stereotype threat. Anxiety regarding whether one's behavior might confirm a negative stereotype about one's group.
• Strategy construction. Creation of a new procedure for processing information.
• Subgoaling. The process of setting intermediate goals that place students in a better position to reach the final goal or solution.
• Summative assessment. Assessment after instruction is finished to document student performance; also called formal assessment.
• Sustained attention. Maintaining attention over an extended period of time; also called vigilance.
• Symbolic function substage. The first substage of preoperational thought, occurring between about 2 and 4 years of age; the ability to represent an object not present develops and symbolic thinking increases; egocentrism is present.
• Syntax. The ways that words must be combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences.
• Systematic desensitization. A method based on classical conditioning that reduces anxiety by getting the individual to associate deep relaxation with successive visualizations of increasingly anxiety-provoking situations.
• Task analysis. Breaking down a complex task that students are to learn into its component parts.
• Taxonomy. A classification system.
• Teacher-as-researcher. Also called teacher-researcher, this concept involves classroom teachers conducting their own studies to improve their teaching practice.
• Temperament. A person's behavioral style and characteristic ways of responding.
• Test-retest reliability. The extent to which a test yields the same performance when a student is given the same test on two or more occasions.
• Theory of mind. Awareness of one's own mental processes and the mental processes of others.
• Thinking. Manipulating and transforming information in memory, which often is done to form concepts, reason, think critically, make decisions, think creatively, and solve problems.
• Time-out. Removing an individual from positive reinforcement.
• Transactional strategy instruction approach. A cognitive approach to reading that emphasizes instruction in strategies, especially metacognitive strategies.
• Transfer. Applying previous experiences and knowledge to learning or problem solving in a new situation.
• Transitivity. The ability to reason and logically combine relationships.
• Triarchic theory of intelligence. Sternberg's view that intelligence comes in three main forms: analytical, creative, and practical.
• Validity. The extent to which a test measures what it is intended to measure and whether inferences about the test scores are accurate and appropriate.
• Values clarification. An approach to moral education that emphasizes helping people clarify what their lives are for and what is worth working for; students are encouraged to define their own values and understand the values of others.
• Voice disorders. Disorders producing speech that is hoarse, harsh, too loud, too high-pitched, or too low-pitched.
• Web. A system for browsing Internet sites that refers to the World Wide Web; named the Web because it is composed of many sites that are linked together.
• Whole-language approach. An approach that stresses that reading instruction should parallel children's natural language learning. Reading materials should be whole and meaningful.
• Within-class ability grouping. Placing students in two or three groups within a class to take into account differences in students' abilities.
• Withitness. A management style described by Kounin in which teachers show students that they are aware of what is happening. Such teachers closely monitor students on a regular basis and detect inappropriate behavior early, before it gets out of hand.
• Working memory. A three-part system that holds information temporarily as a person performs a task. A kind of "mental workbench" that lets individuals manipulate, assemble, and construct information when they make decisions, solve problems, and comprehend written and spoken language.
• Z-score. A score that provides information about how many standard deviations a raw score is above or below the mean.
• Zone of proximal development (ZPD). Vygotsky's term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with guidance and assistance from adults or more-skilled children.