Running head: FINL ESSAY EXAM

Final Essay Exam

Keshlae B. Baltrip

EDUC 5302 Educational Psychology

Professor Kristy Duckworth
East Texas Baptist University

June 27, 2015

Version 1.0

FINAL ESSAY EXAM

In the education profession, teachers and administrators are always forced to handle
situations that occur inside and out of the classroom. As a final exam, we were asked to select
four scenarios to respond to with what we have learned in the course and to provide personal
experiences to back them up. Once going through all the possible scenarios, I decided to respond
to numbers three, four, five, and six.
The first scenario I decided to answer was scenario three. This scenario spoke about two
students that are different in their approaches to school. Elliot is worried about how he appears
to others and Bill just loves a good challenge and consumes himself in his school work. From
reading about learning goals and performance goals and the each of these students represents
each type of goal. In the text book, Elliot displays characteristics of a performance goal oriented
student. The performance goal is defined in the text book as a personal intention to seem
competent or perform well in the eyes of others (Woolfolk, 2015). It states in the scenario Elliot
is constantly making excuses to his classmates as to not be embarrassed if he has a short coming
and he always looks for the easy way out. When students are performance based learners it can
lead to them thinking they have to do well and if failure happens it could lead to the student
giving up on themselves. Which builds for learned helplessness, and that means the student just
does not believe they are capable of achieving a specific goal because they were not born with
the necessary tools to do so.
Bill is quite the opposite of Elliot, he is a learning goal oriented person and he wants to
master anything he is given. From reading more about Bill is believe he is a mastery-oriented
student and that is defined as students who focus on learning goals because they value
achievement and see ability as improvable (Woolfolk, 2015). Because Bill is not concerned with
his test scores, I feel he has mastery goals set in mind. Bill is not worried about how his work is

FINAL ESSAY EXAM

compare to others because he has confidence in his work and abilities. If the boys school was
holding an annual fund-raising for selling candy and where asked to set a goal to reach, I believe
Bill would set a high goal for himself because he seeks a challenge and is also confident he can
reach his goal. I think Bill would reach the goal because of the type of student he is, he will
become invested in selling candy bars and ask for guidance in selling if it becomes necessary.
Bill would focus being the best candy bar salesman he can be to reach his goal. Elliot on the
other hand can go two ways; he can either set a low goal for himself because that would be the
easy way out or he could set an unrealistic goal just to impress his classmates. These actions of
course could be detrimental to Elliots self-efficacy in either outcome. Either Elliots
performance based goals will help him to actually meet his goal or it will hinder him. To
motivate students like Elliot I would have the students help to create rubrics for all classroom
assignments to give them a sense of ownership in their learning. In the book it says students are
more likely to work toward goals that are clear, specific, reasonable, moderately challenging, and
attainable within relatively short periods of time (Woolfolk, 2015). Creating these rubrics with
students like Elliot I believe will help them not focus so much on what other students are doing,
but focus on what he needs to do in order to receive the grade and goal he wants.
The next scenario asked us to discuss Doyles six characteristics of the classroom and
then give my opinion on how the implications of these characteristics are for classroom
management. The first characteristic is Multidimensional, the classroom is full of students and
the teacher. The teacher on has certain amount of time with the student so it is pressure to get
tasks accomplished while accounting for the different levels of abilities in the classroom. The
second characteristic is Simultaneity, meaning the teacher has to cope with everything happening
at one time. The third is Immediacy everything is so fast paced in the classroom and the teacher

FINAL ESSAY EXAM

is constantly interacting with multiple students throughout the day. The fourth characteristic is
Unpredictability, unplanned things happening that is out of the teachers control. The fifth one is
Publicness, everything the teacher does is notice by the teachers; the teacher is judged by
everyone in the classroom. The final characteristic is History, everything is based on previous
actions (Doyle, 2006). I believe these characteristics do have implications on classroom
management but in order to rise above them the teacher must be able to instill procedures into
her students to stay on task no matter the situation. Gaining student cooperation means
planning activities, having materials ready, making appropriate behavioral and academic
demands on the students, giving clear signals, accomplishing transitions smoothly, foreseeing
problems and stopping them before they start, selecting and sequencing activities so that flow
and interest and are maintained-and much more (Woolfolk, 2015). All of these practices must
be instilled the first few weeks of school because that will set the tone for the rest of the year.
The next scenario I selected to do was number five which is about a student named Ellen
who is upset with her teacher because she feels like he is always picking on her. Ellen has
become disruptive and is shouting when her teacher Mr. Fournier is asking her to take her seat.
Reflecting back on what I have learned in this class and from the book, if I was Mr. Fournier
after I had already given her a verbal warning I would start the rest of the class on their
assignments and give her time to calm down. Giving her Ellen space to try and pull herself
together and moving the class forward and keeping them on task will help to ensure the situation
does not get blown up more than it already has. Mr. Fourniers initial reaction would be
considered an assertive response. According to the text book and assertive response the teacher
communicates to the student exactly what they expect and will look the student in the eye and
addresses the student by name (Woolfolk, 2015). Mr. Fournier clearly states Ellens name and

FINAL ESSAY EXAM

tells her to return to her seat. Gordons no-lose method is a method when both student and
teachers needs are taken into account when creating a solution (Woolfolk, 2015). When using
the no-lose method there are six steps, and if used by Mr. Fournier could prove to be beneficial to
repairing the problem between him and Ellen. First Mr. Fournier and Ellen will identify the
problem. Ellen feels like she is always being picked on by Mr. Fournier, secondly coming up
with solutions and thirdly evaluating them to make Ellen not feel like she is targeted by her
teacher would help. Then making consensus decision on the solution both Ellen and Mr.
Fournier came up with and how to implement them will help to resolve their issue (Gordon T.,
1981).
The final scenario I answered was number six. In this scenario a teachers grading scale is
questioned by the new principle at her school because it is according to the principle invalid.
The type of grading system Ms. Rogers is using is called grading on the curve. Grading on the
curve is defined as a norm-referenced grading that compares students performance to an average
level (Woolfolk, 2015). The advantage of this grading system is the student have a greater
chance of being successful and a disadvantage would be For this definition I do think Ms.
Rogers grading scale is norm-referenced because it is based the class as a comparison with
others who have taken the class, so everyone is pretty much given the same range of grades. If I
am thinking as a student, I would like the grading scale depending on where I would come out on
it. But if I felt like I out in more work on an assignment than my fellow classmates I would be
upset if they had a grade so close to mine. As an educator I dont think this type of grading is
always fair, but depending on the assignment or test it could be beneficial to all students to be
given such a big range to make the best grade possible.

FINAL ESSAY EXAM

Concluding this essay I know there is not clear cut answer to every problem that will
occur in the classroom. With the help of this course I was able to use what I have learned along
with cognitive thinking to give what I believed is the right answer to scenarios three, four, five,
and six. Because this course was required for my undergraduate degree a lot of these practices I
was already familiar with a lot of these practices but taking the course in graduate school has
really helped me to go into depth with what I have learned from both times taking the class. I
plan to take everything I have learned from this course with me to my future classroom, and I am
feeling very confident in the choices that I will make.

FINAL ESSAY EXAM

7
References

Woolfolk, A. (2016). Educational Psychology. Pearson.

Doyle, W. (2006). Ecological approaches to classroom management. In C. Evertson & C. s.
Weinstein (Eds.), Handbook for classroom management: Reseache, practice, and
contemporary issues. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gordon, T. (1989). Crippling our children with discipline. Journal of Education, 163, 228-243.

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Appendix A
SelfPoints

Categories

Evaluatio
Possible
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APA formatting / Grammar /

30

25

60

55

60

55

60

55

60

50

30

30

300

270

Punctuation / Usage / Spelling

Quality, depth, and support for the
first response
Quality, depth, and support for the
second response
Quality, depth, and support for the
third response
Quality, depth, and support for the
fourth response
Introduction, conclusion and evidence
of personal insight and/or learning
Total Points
Average of the two scores:

Instructo
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Evaluatio
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