The Pygmalion Effect to Piano Teaching From the Perspective of Educational Psychology

Aiming at the problem of low student enthusiasm in piano teaching, this work tried to apply “Pygmalion effect” to piano teaching from the perspective of educational psychology. Forty-five students were chosen from nine classes in grades 2, 4, and 6 of a central elementary school in Beijing City using experimental research, and the experimental group and the control group were set up. A questionnaire was adopted to conduct the pre-test and post-test of the experiment, which were done to analyze the factors that affect the attitude of students toward music learning and the effect of piano teaching. The results show that the encouragement level of the piano teacher and the enthusiasm of the students in the piano course were significantly correlated at the 0.01 level. There was also a significant correlation between self-efficacy and student piano learning enthusiasm at the 0.01 level. Furthermore, the pre-test and post-test results showed that the students in the experimental group of each grade generally performed much better in piano learning than the students in the control group, which proves that the “Pygmalion effect” can play an excellent interventional role in piano teaching. In this research, the value of “Pygmalion effect” in the educational psychology of piano music education in primary schools was deeply studied to explore the possibility of a novel piano teaching model. The research results show that teacher encouragement can stimulate the subjective initiative of students and make them perform better in piano learning. This research provides reference and ideas for the combination of education- and psychology-related research in the music classroom.

UTILIZATION OF THE INTERNET BY USING SMARTPHONES TO INCREASE STUDENT INSIGHTS IN MADRASAH ALIYAH MAWADDI, KECAMATAN BANJARAN DISTRICT, BANDUNG REGENCY

ABTRACT: The use of smartphones in Madrasah Aliyah Mawaddi, Banjaran District, Bandung Regency has not been able to increase students' insights to support the knowledge they have gained from school through textbooks. Students are only just actively using it to the extent of chatting, taking selfies, and playing games, both online and offline. Researchers feel interested in further researching this phenomenon using qualitative methods. Data taken through observation and interviews with students and teachers. The results of the study are the researchers found that students have not been able to use smartphones to broaden their horizons due to several things, namely: lack of information about using the internet for productive activities, lack of encouragement from teachers to utilize the internet, lack of student focus on their ideals, lack of time due must help their parents, and the weak economic situation of the family. The conclusion that can be drawn is the use of the internet through the use of smartphones is still not optimal due to lack of information, motivation, time, and weak purchasing power of students. Suggestions that can be given are students must be given information through training and teacher encouragement; familiarize learning by utilizing the internet; economic assistance for parents of students.Keywords: Internet-Smartphone-Students

Social and cognitive influences on a teacher candidate's choice to pursue math education

There is a crisis across the United States as schools are seeing a shortage of mathematics teachers. While school districts are working on new ways to recruit teacher candidates, the heart of the problem lies in the decline in students entering secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs. This study evaluates the social and cognitive influences on a student's choice to pursue a degree in secondary mathematics education. An electronic survey was given to 63 students across the state of Missouri in the first three years of a math teacher preparation program. In the survey, students ranked the level of social influences (teacher encouragement, family support, and peer influences) and the level of cognitive influences (self-efficacy, growth mindset, and outcome expectations). Self-efficacy was the largest influence by a statistically significant difference. Teacher encouragement was significantly found to be the largest social influence. This is important because it implies that schools have the largest opportunity to increase the number of secondary math teachers.

Perceived Teacher Encouragement as Buffer to Substance Use in Urban African American Adolescents: Implications for Disconnected Youth

The variety of experiences of African American adolescents is still misunderstood and neglected. Empirical and lay reports consistently report that drug use is rampant within African American communities despite the fact that national statistics show that African Americans engage in substance use less than their White counterparts. Thus, the current study investigates the relations between African American adolescents’ school encouragement, academic future expectations (AFE), and substance use engagement. The participants are 206 African American adolescents (females = 65.7%), mean age 15.78 ( SD = 1.18), who reside in a southern, urban city. The regression results indicated that there was an inverse, trend level relation between school encouragement and the global substance use assessment (β = −.05, p < .10; Δ R2 = .02). AFE moderated the relation between school encouragement and all of the substance use variables except alcohol. Simple slopes analyses revealed that AFE only significantly moderated the relation between school encouragement and substance use for students who reported low levels of AFE, indicating that increased school encouragement may serve as a protective factor against substance use engagement for those students who may be disconnected from academic achievement.

Student Socioeconomic Status and Teacher Stroke: A Case of Female Students in Iran

Supportive teacher-student relationships play a significant role in the trajectory of students’ academic life. Teachers may use various strategies to improve this relationship, one of which is teacher stroke (teacher encouragement). The stroking behavior of teachers might be influenced by several factors, including the socioeconomic status (SES) of students. Accordingly, the current study aims to investigate the differences among female English language teachers at three different school districts (i.e., upper, middle, and lower socio-economic class) in Mashhad, Iran, with regard to their stroking behavior. To fulfill this aim, 300 eighth-grade female students responded to an 18-item questionnaire and the collected data were subsequently analyzed using a one-way ANOVA. The results revealed that teachers tend to stroke high-SES students more frequently. The second aim of this study was to find out if there is a significant correlation between teacher stroke and students’ GPA. The results indicated that all the sub-components of stroke significantly correlate with students’ GPA. Moreover, the results of a stepwise multiple regression test indicated that two of the sub-components of stroke, namely valuing and classroom activities, strongly predict students’ GPA. Finally, the findings of the study have been discussed in light of the existing literature and implications have been provided for language teaching in the formal context of education.