What is Educational Psychology

What Is Educational Psychology?

Educational psychology is the branch of psychology that deals specifically with teaching and learning. Education itself is a way of developing skills, attitudes, knowledge, and desirable habits — and in that process, we’re essentially trying to shape the behaviour of young children toward healthy, adequate adjustment. To achieve education’s goals, a learner’s capacity and needs have to be kept firmly in mind, which is exactly the gap educational psychology exists to fill.

Since psychology as a behavioural science aims to study behaviour — actions that can be seen and observed objectively — and since the basic aim of education is to modify behaviour, the connection is direct: any modification of behaviour presupposes real knowledge of how behaviour develops. Psychology, as a science, helps us understand, control, and predict behaviour; educational psychology takes that scientific understanding and points it squarely at the objectives of education.

Formal Definitions

Anderson’s definition is worth sitting with for a moment, because it names the relationship precisely: general psychology is a pure science, while educational psychology is that science applied — aimed specifically at socialising the individual and modifying behaviour through education.

The Scope of Educational Psychology

Educational psychology has a vast scope because it’s concerned with the entire education process. In practice, that scope concentrates around five key areas where educational psychology has particularly important applications:

1. The Learner

The success of education depends on adapting teaching to individual differences among learners. Educational psychology helps teachers understand the developmental characteristics of students, their individual differences in intelligence and personality, their capacity for adjustment, and their attitudes toward learning. Because every learner is a unique individual — with different abilities, interests, and ways of thinking and responding — these characteristics significantly shape each student’s learning style. Armed with this understanding, a teacher can adjust teaching to the needs of the class, study the factors behind individual differences, and help create school environments where students can develop their inherent potential to the fullest.

2. The Teacher

The teacher is a potent force in any scheme of teaching and learning, so educational psychology also turns its attention to the teacher’s own role. It emphasises the need for a teacher to ‘know thyself’ in order to play that role properly — understanding one’s own conflicts, motivation, anxiety, adjustment, and level of aspiration. It also throws light on the essential personality traits, interests, and aptitudes, and the characteristics of effective teaching, all aimed at inspiring and equipping a teacher to become genuinely successful.

3. The Learning Process

The learning process is simply how a student learns, and educational psychology gives teachers knowledge of this process in general — and of classroom learning problems in particular. Daily experience shows that some teachers succeed in the classroom far more than others: some communicate subject matter effectively, others fail despite knowing the subject just as well. Success, in other words, depends on something beyond subject knowledge alone. With real knowledge of the learning process, a teacher can modify their teaching methods; poor teaching methods are often exactly what causes communication to break down in the classroom. Educational psychology supplies knowledge of appropriate teaching methods, helps develop new teaching strategies, and draws on multiple theories of teaching and learning. Its psychological principles also shape curriculum design at every stage — since a good curriculum has to incorporate students’ needs, their developmental characteristics, their learning patterns, and the needs of society all at once.

4. Learning Experiences

Educational psychology helps in deciding exactly what learning experiences are desirable, and at what stage of a learner’s growth and development they should be introduced — so that those experiences can be acquired with greater ease and satisfaction.

5. Evaluation of the Learning Process

With the help of psychological tests, learning outcomes and curriculum can be properly evaluated. The measurement of aptitudes, and of any innovations a teacher introduces in their teaching, should also be evaluated — since immediate feedback and knowledge of results is exactly what enhances a learner’s motivation.

The Nature of Educational Psychology

Beyond its scope, educational psychology also has a distinct nature — a set of ways in which it qualifies as a science. That nature can be summarised in five overlapping descriptions: