Discussion 1

II. Respond to the following three questions:

1.  Describe a moral dilemma; then describe how an individual might reason at each stage of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. You should create your own hypothetical moral dilemma and carry it through the three levels and six stages of Kohlberg’s theory (label each level and each stage).

2.  Debate the following viewpoint, giving the pros and cons: To establish their identity, adolescents need to separate themselves from their parents so that they can discover who they are, other than being their parent’s children. If parents are very strict and controlling, children must give so much energy to establishing the separation that they don’t have the time and effort to give to defining their identity. For this reason, parents and teachers of adolescents would be more helpful if they were lenient with teenagers.

3.  According to Piaget, around the ages of 10 or 12, students are more capable of conscientiously using and following rules.  How would you use this information if you taught 10-12-year-old children and wanted to use a class meeting to allow children of this age to set the classroom rules and expectations?  How might involving the students in creating the rules be beneficial and problematic?

Discussion 2:

II.  Respond to the following two questions:

1. A Hmmm…. question:   Go to the following URL– https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/radiolab and find the podcast, “Smarty Plants.”  To avoid listening to ads, go to the 14” mark and begin listening to the three studies on plants and intelligence.  Considering what you have read about classical and operant conditioning, behavioral learning, and memory, give your thoughts regarding the experiments on plants, particularly the last one.  What do these experiments make you think about relative to intelligence?  …shaping of behavior?   …memory?

2. Much has been said about violence in the media and its effect on children and adolescents. According to Bandura’s social learning theory, can humans learn to be violent by watching violence? Explain.

Discussion 3:

II.  Respond to the following two questions:

1. What are the best learning strategies to activate prior knowledge before introducing new information to students? Why is it so important to call up prior information before new information is presented? How do teachers accommodate students with limited prior knowledge on a subject?
2. Because low-achieving students ask fewer and more inappropriate questions than other students do, teachers avoid calling on them. What are the implications of such a finding?  How can a teacher help low-achieving students engage in the question-asking process?