Educational Psychology

Educational psychology is involved with studying how human beings learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the teaching psychology, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with the study of the develop and learning of students, often concentrating on subgroups such as gifted children and the disabled. It is often used interchangeably with “school psychology.” In the US and Canada, researchers and theorists are likely to be identified with researchers and theorists. Meanwhile, those who are practicing in the school or school-related settings are associated with school psychologists.
Educational psychology can be partly understood because of its relationship with other disciplines. It gets primary information from psychology, due to their relationship and similarities with medicine and biology. In return, it provides helpful information to individuals indulged in the field of educational studies, such as instructional design, educational technology, organizational learning, classroom management, and special education.
Educational psychology provides important contributions to cognitive and learning science. In colleges and universities, departments of educational psychology are usually located in the faculties of education, due to insufficient representation of content in beginning psychology.
For better understanding of learning characteristics in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, educational psychology has developed and applied theories of human development. They are often represented as stages that people undergo as they mature, theories of development provide a description of the chanfes in cognitive skills, social roles, moral reasoning, and beliefs about natural knowledge.
Educational psychologists have been involved in researching the application of Jean Piaget’s Theory of Development in the field of instruction. Piaget’s theory states that children pass through four stages of cognitive abilities. He developed a hypothesis that children have no capacity for abstract logical thinking until they reach 11 years old. Young children should therefore be taught with the use of concrete objects and examples. According to researchers, transition from concrete to abstract do not take place simultaneously in all domains. A child has the capacity for abstract thinking of mathematics but is restricted to concrete thinking when reasoning about human relationships. Undoubtedly, Piaget’s lasting contribution is his belief that people are active in constructing their learning by regulating themselves.
Piaget suggested a developmental theory of moral reasoning which involved a child maturing from a naïve understanding of morality determined by behaviors and outcomes to a more complex understanding dependent on intentions. His view of moral development was expounder by the Stage Theory of Moral Development by Kohlberg. Evidence proves that moral reasoning in these theories is not enough to represent moral behavior. For a better understanding of educational psychology and psychology online, check out Psychology Fitness.

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