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Educational Psychology Reflection Paper

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Over the course of this semester, I have had the opportunity to learn about educational psychology. I have always enjoyed psychology and was especially interested in how it applied to teaching in the classroom. There were five specific concepts we discussed over the semester that especially interested me. I found that homogenous and heterogeneous grouping, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, operant conditioning, cooperative learning, and divergent versus convergent thinking are five psychological concepts that every teacher should learn about in preparation for teaching.
In order to promote the utmost success of students, numerous studies have been conducted to determine the ideal organization strategies for grouping within classrooms. There are two major types of grouping, heterogeneous and homogeneous. Heterogeneous grouping can be described as randomly grouping students together. The teacher does not group based on any specific criteria and attempts to involve all types of students within each group. In further detail, there may be one student who overachieves at mathematics and a student that performs below average in mathematics within the same group. Homogeneous grouping is arranging students together based on their academic achievement in particular subjects. For instance, a homogeneous group will contain students who are all around the same reading level. There are two divisions within homogeneous grouping. One is within-class grouping. This means that the students

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