TEACHING EDUCATIONAL-PSYCHOLOGY - TEXTS IN CONTEXT

Writing a textbook in educational psychology is for me an act of reach ing. In this article, I discuss my beliefs about the educational psych ology course, the students who take it, their prior knowledge and expe ctations, and the processes of teaching and learning. Given this conte xt, I consider the roles of textbooks for students, professors, and th e field in general. To fulfill these roles, what should be the content and organization of textbooks? How should the contents of textbooks b e tied to practice and how can textbooks be used most productively to support learning? Because assessment shapes much of what students lear n with textbooks, I consider ways to link texts, assessment, and learn ing. I end by speculating about the future of textbooks and teaching p reparation.