The top 10 educational examples, and popular theories by famous educational psychologists
The field of educational psychology is devoted to the study and enhancement of human learning across all stages of life and in any setting. Schools are just one example, but there are also workplaces, organized sports, government agencies, retirement communities, and other places where people are learning and teaching.
The importance of educational psychology lies in its emphasis on comprehending and enhancing the essential capacity of humans to learn. Educational psychologists want to help both teachers and students in their mission to improve human learning.
Programs, curricula, lesson planning, classroom management strategies, and more can all be influenced by educational psychology. For instance, educators can utilize ideas from educational psychology to comprehend and address how rapidly evolving technologies both aid and hinder the learning of their students. Educational psychologists also play a crucial role in educating educators, parents, and administrators about the most effective strategies for students who struggle with traditional education.
What an Educational Psychologist Does Typically, educational psychologists have either a master’s or a doctoral degree in the field. They work to improve human learning in a variety of teaching, research, and applied settings. Additionally, educational psychologists engage in a variety of applied roles, such as curriculum design consulting; evaluating educational programs at training facilities or schools; and providing teachers with the best methods for teaching a particular subject, grade level, or group of students, whether they are mainstream, disabled, or gifted.
INSTANCES OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Howard Gardner, a Training Clinician and a teacher at the Harvard Graduate Institute of Instruction, is known for having fostered the hypothesis of different insights. According to this theory, in addition to the traditionally measured forms of intelligence known as verbal and visual-spatial intelligence, there are also forms of intelligence known as kinesthetic or athletic intelligence, interpersonal or social-emotional intelligence, musical or artistic intelligence, and possibly other forms of intelligence that we have not yet learned to measure.
Dr. Gardner publishes, studies, and teaches. Among his numerous books are Frames of Mind: The Disciplined Mind and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, both published in 1983:The Education That Every Child Deserves, Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests (2000)
Mamie Phipps Clark, depicted above, was the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University. She was born in 1917 and died in 1983. She and her husband, Kenneth Clark (1914–2005), were interested in African-American children’s growth and self-esteem.
POPULAR EDUCATION PSYCHOLOGY THEORIES
Several theories have been developed to explain how people learn. The following is a discussion of some of the most enduring and representative contemporary theories.
1.Behaviorism (Skinner, 1938) equates human learning with observable activity shifts. Behaviorism emphasizes stimuli or calls to action, behavior, and reinforcement or lack thereof.
According to behaviorism, positive reinforcement makes behavioral responses more likely to occur again in the future. However, positive behavioral intervention and support (PBIS), in which proactive methods play a prominent role in enhancing human learning within schools, is one of the most robust developments in the subsequent behaviorist tradition.
2.Cognitivism (Neisser, 1967) was influenced in part by the development of computers and an information-processing model that was thought to apply to human learning. It also developed as a reaction to the belief that the behaviorist model of learning did not take into account mental processes and had limitations.
3.According to Piaget (1955), constructivism holds that humans learn in stages beginning in childhood. During these stages, we adjust our schemas to the world’s experiences and match our fundamental concepts, or “schemas,” of reality.
For constructivists, the organization of reality always has a subjective component. Human learning cannot be said to reflect a predetermined external reality from this perspective. Instead, the reality is always a combination of one’s active world-building and the world itself.
4.The learner-centered and interactive foci of constructivism and social learning theories influenced the formation of this school of thought in the 1970s.According to theories of experiential learning, the most important factor in transforming a learner’s behavior and increasing their knowledge and understanding is having meaningful everyday experiences.
5.Social and Contextual Learning Theories Challenge Individual-Focused Approaches in Constructivism and Cognitivism Social and Contextual Learning Theories First Appearing in the Late 20th Century Social and context-oriented speculations are affected by anthropological and ethnographic exploration and underline the manners in which climate and social settings shape one’s learning.
