The Study of Educational Psychology

This is Unit One, on the study of educational psychology: what the field is, where it came from, what teachers need from it, and the philosophies behind classrooms. Carry one idea through this unit: educational psychology studies learning scientifically and puts what it finds to work in teaching, so it is both a science and a practice. That idea runs from the field's founders to a teacher's own classroom. At the entry on the field's history, the unit shows how the science changed its answer to what learning is. By the end you will be able to define educational psychology and say how it relates to psychology. To trace the field from Herbart and Thorndike to the cognitive turn. To explain why teaching is both an art and a science. To place a teacher's concern in Fuller's stages. And to match a classroom to its philosophy.

Six entries on the field and its founders, from a definition to the first intelligence test and the law of effect.

What educational psychology is.

EDP 0001 Educational Psychology Defined

Educational psychology is the branch of psychology that studies human learning scientifically, from cognitive and behavioral perspectives, and applies its findings to teaching and schooling: instructional design, curriculum, special education, classroom management and motivation. It leans heavily on quantitative methods, including testing and measurement, and it stands to psychology as medicine stands to biology.

The field's first theorist of teaching.

EDP 0002 Herbart's Formal Steps

Johann Herbart, often called the father of educational psychology, held that learning depends on interest and that teachers should build on what students know. His formal steps were review, preparation with an overview, presentation, relating new material to old, and application. He worked in the early nineteenth century, long before the field became a separate science.

The decades when the discipline took shape.

EDP 0003 The Golden Era, 1890 to 1920

Between eighteen ninety and nineteen twenty, the new discipline set out to apply observation and experiment to the everyday problems of schooling. Mass immigration swelled the schools, and intelligence tests were used to screen new arrivals at Ellis Island. These were the years educational psychology became a distinct field, rather than a topic inside philosophy.

A psychologist who spoke to teachers directly.

EDP 0004 William James Talks to Teachers

William James, the father of American psychology, wrote Talks to Teachers on Psychology in eighteen ninety-nine, addressing the new science directly to teachers. He defined education as organizing a learner's acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behave, and he stressed habit, attention, memory and association, linking new material to what students already know.

The test built to find children who needed help.

EDP 0005 Binet and the First Intelligence Test

Asked by the French government to find children who would struggle in regular classes, Alfred Binet built the first intelligence test with Théodore Simon. American psychologists adapted it into the Stanford-Binet, still used in revised form. Binet stressed individual differences, and urged that teachers be trained to observe them in their own students.

The principle behind the scientific movement.

EDP 0006 Thorndike's Law of Effect

Edward Thorndike's law of effect holds that a connection is strengthened when followed by something satisfying and weakened when followed by something annoying, as when a student praised for a clear answer becomes likelier to answer that way again. Thorndike saw learning as incremental and championed the scientific movement in education, including standardized achievement testing.

Six entries from Thorndike's finding on transfer to Bloom, ending with the payoff: how the field's idea of learning changed.

What carries over between subjects.

EDP 0007 Transfer Between Subjects

Thorndike and Robert Woodworth found that learning transfers from one subject to another only when the two subjects share similar elements. Studying the classics, the finding implied, does not build a general intelligence for every subject, and the result undercut a long tradition of teaching classical subjects as mental exercise. Transfer returns in unit four.

A philosopher who wanted learning by doing.

EDP 0008 Dewey: Learning by Doing

John Dewey led progressive education, treating school as preparation for citizenship and putting the student, rather than the subject, at the center. Students learn by doing, through observation, problem solving and inquiry, as he set out in How We Think. His pragmatism, thought tested in action, is the philosophy beneath progressivism.

Research on children that reached the Supreme Court.

EDP 0009 The Clarks and Brown v. Board

Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark studied how segregation affected Black children, and their work informed the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision of nineteen fifty-four. Mamie Phipps Clark co-authored the research, so both names belong to it, not her husband's alone.

Bringing Piaget into education.

EDP 0010 Bruner and Discovery Learning

Jerome Bruner brought Jean Piaget's ideas into educational psychology and championed discovery learning, in which students question, explore and experiment to solve problems, as when a teacher sets up a puzzle and students work toward the principle themselves. Bruner stressed the structure of each subject and helped develop Head Start.

The claim that all students can learn.

EDP 0011 Bloom: All Students Can Learn

Benjamin Bloom argued that all students can learn, given clear learning goals, active participation, and feedback on their own strengths and weaknesses. His taxonomy of educational objectives sorts learning goals from simple recall to judgment, and it returns in units five and ten, in its original and revised forms.

The payoff: how the field's idea of learning changed.

EDP 0012 From Behaviorism to Cognition

Here the unit's governing idea is at work. A science of learning applied to teaching had to decide what learning is, and its answer changed. Its early science drew on William James's attention to habit and memory and on Thorndike's law of effect, learning as connections strengthened by consequences and built up gradually; standardized testing and programmed instruction grew from that view, and Binet turned the field toward individual differences. Dewey pulled toward learning by doing. From the nineteen sixties the field shifted from a behaviorist to a cognitive perspective, as Bruner brought in Piaget's children constructing their own knowledge and Bloom organized goals by the thinking they demand. One spelling lesson shows the shift: drilled and praised word by word for Thorndike, discovered as a pattern for Bruner, checked for its level of thinking for Bloom. Behaviorist methods never left the classroom, and how much guidance discovery needs is still argued over.

Five entries on the teacher's work: art and science, many dimensions, the system around the classroom, concerns and knowledge.

Is teaching an art or a science?

EDP 0013 Art or Science?

Educational psychology treats teaching as both an art, skill built from experience, and a science, systematic knowledge tested by research. Researchers test methods scientifically, and teachers apply the findings to the craft of their own classrooms. Neither half is enough alone, because classroom innovation raises new questions that research then has to test.

Everything a teacher must understand at once.

EDP 0014 Teaching Is Multidimensional

Teaching is multidimensional: beyond their subject, teachers need to understand development, learning, motivation, differences among learners, classroom management, instruction and assessment, the same list that maps this course's later units. Four approaches frame the research behind them, behavioral, cognitive, contextual and biopsychological, the cognitive one arising in the nineteen fifties.

The system every teacher works inside.

EDP 0015 The Teacher's System

Teachers work inside nested circles of influence. At the center is the classroom, where teacher and students meet each day. Around it sits a ring of state and local decisions: policy, the mandated curriculum, adopted materials, technology and required assessments. The outer ring holds federal law, professional standards and the wider culture. Decisions in the outer rings reach the classroom without the teacher having made them, as when a state adopts a new reading test and a third-grade teacher's plans change that week. Place each influence by who decides it, not by how close it feels.

How teachers' concerns change with experience.

EDP 0016 Fuller's Stages of Concern

Fuller's concerns theory, built from interviews with student teachers, describes three stages of concern. Survival, or self, comes first: will the students like me, and can I control the class? Task follows: materials, time and delivering lessons. Impact comes last: each learner's achievement, needs, and whether learning transfers. A teacher who spends every evening building worksheets has a task concern. Worry about covering the material is task; worry whether a struggling student understood is impact. The stages are not exclusive, and a veteran changing schools may worry about survival again.

Four kinds of teacher knowledge.

EDP 0017 Four Kinds of Teacher Knowledge

Shulman described four kinds of teacher knowledge: practical, from teaching itself; case, from other teachers' experience; theoretical, from ideas; and empirical, from research, as when a teacher reads a study on feedback. Educational psychology supplies mainly the theoretical and empirical kinds, while practical and case knowledge come from classrooms.

Three entries on the philosophies behind classrooms, ending with how to match a classroom to its philosophy.

Two old answers to what is real.

EDP 0018 Idealism and Realism

Idealism, from Plato, holds that ideas are the true reality; realism, from Aristotle, holds that reality exists independently of the mind and is known by observation. An idealist teacher leads a Socratic dialogue and a realist teacher runs an experiment: they differ on whether truth lives in ideas grasped by reason or in a world studied through the senses.

Two philosophies of action and choice.

EDP 0019 Pragmatism and Existentialism

Pragmatism, from Charles Sanders Peirce, applies thought to action on real problems; existentialism, from Sartre, holds that individuals create their own meaning. Pragmatist classrooms favor hands-on projects, while existentialist classrooms let students choose and defend their own positions. Dewey built progressive education on pragmatism, and existentialists resist measuring and standardizing students.

Matching a classroom to its philosophy.

EDP 0020 Matching a Classroom to a Philosophy

Curriculum philosophies run from teacher-centered to student-centered to society-centered. Essentialism teaches a common core of basic skills, with the teacher in charge and regular testing. Perennialism teaches enduring truths through the liberal arts and Socratic seminar. Progressivism is experiential, with the teacher as facilitator. Social reconstructionism and critical pedagogy treat teaching as a political act, and constructivism has students build knowledge from experience. Students who build, test and redesign a model bridge are in a progressive classroom. Essentialism wants useful basic skills while perennialism wants enduring truths, so ask who sets the content and why.

Look at what you can now do. You can define educational psychology: the scientific study of learning, applied to teaching, standing to psychology as medicine stands to biology. You can trace the field from Herbart's formal steps and Thorndike's law of effect, through Dewey and the Clarks, to the cognitive turn of Bruner and Bloom. You can explain why teaching is both an art and a science, each needing the other. You can place a teacher's concern in Fuller's stages: survival, then task, then impact. And you can match a classroom to its philosophy by asking who sets the content, and why. Unit Two turns to how the field turns questions into evidence.