Educational Psychology…..advancing theory and methods to better learning and performance.
Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn and retain knowledge, primarily in educational settings like classrooms. This includes emotional, social, and cognitive learning processes. Areas of focus might include teaching, testing and assessment methods, psychometrics, classroom or learning environments, and learning, social, and behavioral problems that may impede learning, technology in learning. Graduates work as professors, education specialists, learning analysts, program evaluators, and find positions in research institutions, school systems, the testing industry, government agencies, and private industry.
Educational psychologists study the biological, cognitive, emotional, and social factors involved in learning and deepen our understanding of instructional strategies, individual learning styles, and the importance of the environmental context. They may specialize in children with specific learning challenges and develop teaching methods that help students succeed in school.
Educational psychology incorporates several other psychology disciplines, including developmental psychology, behavioral psychology, and congnitive psychology. Over time, five main schools of thought have emerged, including behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, experientialism, and social contextual learning theories.
Perspectives in Educational Psychology
As with other areas of psychology, researchers within educational psychology tend to take on different perspectives when considering a problem. These perspectives focus on specific factors that influence learning, including thoughts, emotions, behaviors, experiences, and more.
Five main schools of thought dominate this field of research, including behavioral, developmental, cognitive, constructivist, and experiential perspectives.
The Behavioral Perspective
This perspective suggests that all behaviors are learned through conditioning, such as positive reinforcement. Psychologists who take this perspective rely firmly on the principles of operant coperant conditioning to explain how learning happens.1
For example, teachers might reward learning by giving students tokens that can be exchanged for desirable items such as candy or toys. The behavioral perspective operates on the theory that students will learn when rewarded for desirable behavior and punished for bad behavior.
While such methods can be useful in some cases, the behavioral approach has been criticized for failing to account for internal processes such as and attitudes, emotions, and intrinsic motivations for learning.
The Developmental Perspective
The developmental perspective includes studying biological, cognitive, emotional, and social development throughout the lifespan. This perspective focuses on how children acquire new skills and knowledge as they grow and develop.2
For developmental psychologists, there is a balance between nature and nature in the learning process. This means that as the brain develops, the capacity for learning, problem-solving, and memory increases, and at the same time, life experiences with family, playmates, teachers, and mentors facilitate the learning process and acquisition of knowledge.
Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development stages are one example of an important developmental theory that examines how children grow intellectually.
By understanding how children think at different stages of development, educational psychologists can better understand what children are capable of at each point of their growth. This can help educators create instructional methods and materials aimed at specific age groups.
The Cognitive Perspective
The cognitive approach has become much more widespread, mainly because it accounts for factors such as thinking, attention, information processing, and memory formation.
Educational psychology is the study of how people learn and retain information. It mainly focuses on the learning process of early childhood and adolescence; however, learning is a lifelong endeavor. People don’t only learn at school; rather, they learn through all of their life experiences, including at home, with friends, at work, through social media, and through culture.
Educational psychologists study the biological, cognitive, emotional, and social factors involved in learning and deepen our understanding of instructional strategies, individual learning styles, and the importance of the environmental context. They may specialize in children with specific learning challenges and develop teaching methods that help students succeed in school.
Educational psychology incorporates several other psychology disciplines, including developmental psychology, behavioral psychology, and cognitive psychology. Over time, five main schools of thought have emerged, including behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, experientialism, and social contextual learning theories.
This article discusses some of the different perspectives taken within the field of educational psychology, topics that educational psychologists study, and career options in this field.
Perspectives in Educational Psychology
As with other areas of psychology, researchers within educational psychology tend to take on different perspectives when considering a problem. These perspectives focus on specific factors that influence learning, including thoughts, emotions, behaviors, experiences, and more.
Five main schools of thought dominate this field of research, including behavioral, developmental, cognitive, constructivist, and experiential perspectives.
The Behavioral Perspective
This perspective suggests that all behaviors are learned through conditioning, such as positive reinforcement. Psychologists who take this perspective rely firmly on the principles of operant conditioning to explain how learning happens.1
For example, teachers might reward learning by giving students tokens that can be exchanged for desirable items such as candy or toys. The behavioral perspective operates on the theory that students will learn when rewarded for desirable behavior and punished for bad behavior.
While such methods can be useful in some cases, the behavioral approach has been criticized for failing to account for internal processes such as attitudes intrinsic attitudes, emotions, and intrinsic motivations for learning.
The Developmental Perspective
The developmental perspective includes studying biological, cognitive, emotional, and social development throughout the lifespan. This perspective focuses on how children acquire new skills and knowledge as they grow and develop.2
For developmental psychologists, there is a balance between nature and nature in the learning process. This means that as the brain develops, the capacity for learning, problem-solving, and memory increases, and at the same time, life experiences with family, playmates, teachers, and mentors facilitate the learning process and acquisition of knowledge.
Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development are one example of an important developmental theory that examines how children grow intellectually.
By understanding how children think at different stages of development, educational psychologists can better understand what children are capable of at each point of their growth. This can help educators create instructional methods and materials aimed at specific age groups.
The Cognitive Perspective
The cognitive approach has become much more widespread, mainly because it accounts for factors such as thinking, attention, information processing, and memory formation.
Cognitive psychologists value constructs such as individual beliefs, perspectives, emotions, and motivations that contribute to the learning process.4 This theory supports the idea that a person learns because of their own intrinsic intrinsic motivations, not because of external rewards as a behaviorist would view it.
Cognitive psychology aims to understand how people think, learn, remember, and process information.
Educational psychologists who take a cognitive perspective are interested in understanding how kids become motivated to learn, how they remember the things that they learn, and how they solve problems, among other topics.
The Constructivist Approach
This perspective focuses on how we actively construct our knowledge of the world.5 Constructivism accounts for the social and cultural influences that affect how we learn.
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