Teachers help students learn, develop and realise their potential. Educational psychology is the scientific study of how people learn and how teachers can foster learning. An understanding of these principles and how they can be applied to classroom situations is as crucial as it ever has been for the contemporary Australian school teacher, from early childhood through to secondary school. Building on the success of the first edition, Educational Psychology, Second Australian edition, draws together the pre-eminent academic voices in Australia's educational psychology landscape. The culmination of the authors' knowledge, hands-on experience and insight will help pre-service teachers develop a framework to implement teaching strategies that promote students' learning, development and potential. Australian school students and learning environments are ever-changing. Many issues have an impact on the dynamics of the contemporary learning and teaching environment, including increasing student diversity, the pervasive impact of technology and the evolution of the Australian curriculum. The study of educational psychology can help teachers better understand their students and better understand the process of teaching. That is the primary purpose of this resource. Educational Psychology, Second Australian edition, also encourages pre-service teachers to become reflective practitioners who can frame classroom-based questions and use a 'scientist-practitioner' approach to answer those questions. It provides: * a clear description of the theoretical principles in psychology that have relevance for education, along with an analysis of their current research support * practical guidance about how to link theory and practice in the context of classrooms * learning tools to help pre-service teachers develop skills they can build on throughout their teaching careers. Educational Psychology, Second Australian edition, prepares pre-service teachers for their profession by encouraging reflective practice and critical thinking in a jargon-free, accessible learning design. It helps inform the 'prac' teaching experience with extensive lesson plan analysis and hones developing skills with thought-provoking questions and activities.

Author Biography

Dr Eva Dobozy is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Curtin University in Perth. With more than 20 years experience in education, first as an early childhood/ primary teacher and then as a university lecturer and researcher, Eva is producing high-quality educational research and designing, supervising and teaching various educational psychology courses. Her interests and research work are concerned with the issue of effective pedagogical modelling in face-to-face, blended and online learning environments through the design of learning-centric and highly interactive curricula. She is working as part of a learning design group on the design and implementation of transdisciplinary pedagogical templates. Her research spans the intersection between learning theory, learning design, technology-enhanced learning and teacher professional development. Eva has a substantial research and publishing record and has received numerous invitations to present her work as a keynote speaker at international conferences. In addition, she has been the managing or guest editor for a number of educational periodicals and is currently an elected member and vice-president of the Western Australian Institute for Educational Research, and the Australian representative and executive member at the International Council for Educational Media, which has its head office in Vienna, Austria. Eva also serves as an elected member on the Curtin University Teaching and Learning Committee. Professor Brendan Bartlett is Chair Professor of Education at the Australian Catholic University and Program Director at the Learning Sciences Institute Australia. He is a Gellibrand Scholar, UNICEF Fellow, King Mongkut Medallist, award holder of the Rotary International Certificate for Significant Achievement in Education and on the Australian Learning and Teaching Council for services to education. Brendan's most recent ARC Linkage research has reported on success in retrieval of youth whose early attempts to transition from school to work, training or higher education had failed. Currently, he is supported by an ARC Discovery Grant (with Clarence Ng and Claire Wyatt-Smith) in studying avoidance issues in children's literacy development and leads a team reporting on Queensland's alternative cducation programs. For years he has sought to develop, through research, his understanding of language and thought and of how people identify the 'big' ideas in texts they encounter or create -- and how they communicate, remember and make sense of such ideas. There have been significant developments in education and industry in what Brendan has found thus far, with a metalinguistic skill he has named and theorised as 'top-level structuring'. Dr Michael C Nagel is an Associate Professor in human development and learning within the School of Education at the University of the Sunshine Coast. A prolific author, he has written a number of journal articles and books related to theories of learning and neurological development in children, and is a contributor to a number of textbooks used in undergraduate and postgraduate education courses throughout Australia. Nominated as Australian Lecturer of the Year each year since 2010, Michael is also a member of the prestigious International Neuropsychological Society and the Queensland Director of the Australian Council on Children and the Media, and is a feature writer for the Child series of magazines, which offers parenting advice to more than one million Australian readers. When he is not busy professionally, he spends his time learning the important lessons of adolescence and life from his own children, Madeline and Harrison. Dr Rebecca Spooner-Lane is a qualified psychologist and is employed as a Lecturer in educational psychology and educational counselling in the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. Rebecca coordinates courses at both an undergraduate and Master's level, including QUT's Stepping Out Conference -- a fourth-year capstone unit that prepares pre-service teachers for a successful transition into teaching. Her research interests centre on supporting the development of quality teachers including mentoring, values-based education and intercultural competence. Dr Amina Youssef-Shalala is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Education and Arts at the Australian Catholic University in Strathfield, Sydney. She is a secondary school teacher in human society and its environment, economics and business studies. Awarded the University Medal in Education for her research in general problem solving at the University of New South Wales, Amina has a keen interest in investigating the use of problem-solving strategies within the secondary school classroom across different learning areas. Her research has found that when novice learners are presented with an unfamiliar problem, using a general problemsolving strategy such as means-ends analysis can be effective. As an early career researcher, Amina has published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied and Applied Cognitive Psychology. Academics in the field of cognitive science regard her research to be cutting edge, which has the potential to have a large impact on teaching and learning.