Handbook of Psychology, Educational Psychology

Irving B. Weiner, William M. Reynolds, Gloria E. Miller

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780470647776
• eBook ISBN: 9781118281932
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Psychology is of interest to academics from many fields, as well as to the thousands of academic and clinical psychologists and general public who can't help but be interested in learning more about why humans think and behave as they do. This award-winning twelve-volume reference covers every aspect of the ever-fascinating discipline of psychology and represents the most current knowledge in the field. This ten-year revision now covers discoveries based in neuroscience, clinical psychology's new interest in evidence-based practice and mindfulness, and new findings in social, developmental, and forensic psychology.

Chapter 1

Educational Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives

William M. Reynolds and Gloria E. Miller

Introduction to Educational Psychology

Current Presentations of the Field

Distinctiveness of This Volume

Overview of This Volume

Early Education and Curriculum Applications

Psychology in the Schools

Perspectives on Educational Programs, Research, and Policy

Summary

References

Introduction to Educational Psychology

The field of educational psychology traces its beginnings to some of the major figures in psychology at the turn of the past century. William James at Harvard University, who is often associated with the founding of psychology in the United States, in the late 1800s published influential books on psychology (1890) and educational psychology (1899). Other major theorists and thinkers that figure in the early history of the field include G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey, and Edward L. Thorndike. Hall, cofounder of the American Psychological Association and its first president was a student of James. Dewey (1916), who at the University of Chicago introduced major educational reforms in the United States, was one of Hall's students. Thorndike, who we often associate with theories of intelligence and learning, was also one of James's students. He published the book Educational Psychology (Thorndike, 1903) early in his career and went on to start the Journal of Educational Psychology in 1910, one of the first journals to be published by the American Psychological Association. Thorndike had a tremendous influence on the study of psychology in the early 1900s, and in the integration of learning theory, individual differences, and psychometric methods into educational and school-based research (Beatty, 1998). Similarly, the impact of Lewis Terman (Terman & Childs, 1912) on the field of educational psychology and the assessment of intelligence and the study of gifted children (as well as related areas such as educational tracking), was monumental at this time and throughout much of the 20th century. Others, such as Huey (1900, 1901, 1908) were conducting groundbreaking psychological research to advance the understanding of important educational fields such as reading and writing. Further influences on educational psychology, and its impact on the field of education, have been linked to European philosophers of the mid- and late 19th century. For example, the impact of Herbart on educational reforms and teacher preparation in the United States has been described by Hilgard (1996) in his history of educational psychology. Largely ignored by western psychologists until the 1980s, the work of Russian psychologists in the early 20th century, and in particular the work of Lev Vygotsky (1926, 1978) also contributed to the field of educational psychology. As readers of this volume will find, the work and influence of Vygotsky permeates research in educational psychology in the United States at the end of the 20th and into the 21st century.

This volume of the Handbook of Psychology does not delve into the historical foundations of educational psychology but rather deals with exemplar research and practice domains of educational psychology in the latter part of the 20th and early 21st century, with a focus on promising research and trends. Historical antecedents of this field of psychology are presented in Volume 1 of the Handbook.

It is evident from the chapters in this volume that much of the research in educational psychology has been conducted in classroom settings, which mirror the applied nature of this field. This research encompasses a broad range of related topics including: children's learning and abilities, reading, classroom processes, and teacher effectiveness. Educational psychology has been described as a discipline uniquely focused upon “the systematic study of the individual in context” (Berliner & Calfee, 1996, p. 6). The long-term focus on the study of children in classroom situations assists in the direct translation of research to practice. This is not a new idea, and has been the driving force of this field for more than 100 years.

From a pedagogical perspective, educational psychology differs from most fields of psychology in that it is often found as a separate department in universities and colleges. To some extent this reflects the diversity of research and academic domains within educational psychology, as well as the rich and applied nature of this field of study. Departments of educational psychology are most often found in colleges of education, and courses in educational psychology are typically required for students in teacher education programs and related majors.

The field of educational psychology has ties to many professional organizations and professional societies in the United States and other countries. In the United States, the two major organizations that represent the field of educational psychology are the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In the APA, educational psychology has as its primary affiliation, Division 15, Educational Psychology, with secondary affiliations in Divisions 5 (Measurement & Statistics), 7 (Developmental Psychology), and 16 (School Psychology). In the AERA, Division C (Learning and Instruction) largely represents educational psychology with additional representation in Division D (Measurement & Research Methodology), Division E (Counseling and Human Development), and Division H (School Evaluation and Program Development). We also note that a number of prominent educational psychologists, including Lee Cronbach and Frank Farley have served as president of both APA and AERA, with Cronbach also serving as president of the Psychometric Society, and Farley president of numerous APA divisions and other professional organizations. A number of other professional organizations that have substantial overlap with educational psychology include the International Reading Association, Council for Exceptional Children, National Association of School Psychologists, Psychometric Society, Society for Research in Child Development, Society for Research on Adolescence, and other societies and associations.

Contemporary educational psychology encompasses a broad and complex array of topics, research, and social policies. Research in educational psychology is often designed to provide insights into authentic educational problems, using empirical, rather than normative or subjective judgments. It is important to recognize that qualitative methodologies also provide empirical bases for understanding educational problems (Levin & Kratochwill, this volume). The field of educational psychology, possibly more than any other, has been shaped by many multidisciplinary factors. The impact of the cognitive revolution, for example, has been broadened by incorporation of other subdisciplines, including sociology, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and the associated fields of psychology. The major focus of educational psychology, however, is on individuals and their development especially within educational settings. Another important characteristic of the field of educational psychology is that issues of concern are not mutually exclusive and in fact tend to overlap and interrelate more than stand as isolated domains of knowledge. More recently the field has included in its focus the study of new technology-based and computerized learning environments (Graesser, 2009), the depth of which is illustrated by Goldman, Black, Maxwell, Plass, and Keitges (this volume).

Educational psychology includes a rich heritage in the domains of research design and methodology, including statistics and measurement. For most of the 20th century, educational psychologists have contributed to enhancing statistical and measurement procedures, and this continues into the 21st century. As an example, in the 1950s two educational psychologists published papers reporting on statistical and measurement procedures that have become among the most frequently cited articles in psychology. Cronbach's (1951) classic paper on the internal structure of tests and the derivation of coefficient alpha as an internal measurement of reliability continues to be one of the most cited papers in the behavioral sciences and the most used (and also debated) procedure for the measurement of test reliability. Henry Kaiser's dissertation in educational psychology at the University of California at Berkeley in the mid-1950s provided the basis for an orthogonal rotation procedure in factor analysis that he called varimax factor rotation (1958), with various little jiffy procedures to follow. Donald Campbell (an APA president) and educational psychologist Julian Stanley (an AERA president), published a little volume in 1966 (expanding on the great work of Iowa educational psychologist E. F. Lindquist [1940] who was also cofounder of the American College Testing Program—ACT), which provided a simple structure for researchers in many fields for understanding basic research designs and associated threats to internal and external validity. This work also laid the foundation for the development of numerous quasi-experimental designs (Cook & Campbell, 1979; Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002) that are critical to educational research and program evaluation. These are but a few of the many statistical, measurement, and methodological contributions that have been and continue to be made to the field of psychology, and behavioral and social sciences by educational psychologists.

Current Presentations of the Field

A comprehensive review of major work across the field of educational psychology was presented in the publication the Handbook of Educational Psychology, edited by Berliner and Calfee in 1996. This influential handbook, sponsored by the APA division of Educational Psychology (Division 15), was commissioned to reflect the current state of the field up until the early 1990s. Berliner and Calfee provided a powerful synthesis of the scholarship that defined the scope and relevancy of educational psychology as a discipline up until this time. The major goals of this volume were to offer a vigorous defense of educational psychology as a discipline and to forward the distinctive viewpoints that educational psychologists maintain when explaining educational events. Chapters were organized to represent the major domains within the discipline. Authors were asked to discuss how coverage of these topics changed from 1970 to 1990 and to summarize significant changes in research design within the discipline. The following domains were covered: learning and transfer, motivation, physical and psychological development, intelligence, exceptionality, psychology of learning within subject matters, assessment, processes of teacher growth and development, the psychology underlying instructional strategies, educational technology, and the methodological, philosophical, and historical foundations of the field.

Several consistent conceptual threads ran through the majority of invited chapters. One was the critical paradigm shift from behaviorism to cognitive psychology that shaped the discipline over this period. Another commonality across topics was that this conceptual shift resulted in a vigorous debate regarding research methods. What has emerged is a greater range of analytical tools, a methodological pluralism marked by some promising new practices such as exploratory data analysis (Jaeger & Bond, 1996) and design experiments (Brown, 1992). In drawing conclusions about the field, Berliner and Calfee suggested that the discipline's bread and butter issues had not changed as dramatically as the conceptual and methodological tools that educational psychologists employ to understand educational phenomena. They also concluded on a note of congratulatory celebration at what educational psychology, as a discipline, has contributed and looked optimistically to its future.

Although not yet published as the current volume was going into production, the American Psychological Association has undertaken a three-volume, 1,800-plus page work covering the many domains within educational psychology (Harris, Graham, & Urdan, in press). Volumes of this work focus on the diversity of theories, constructs, and issues in educational psychology; the study of individual differences and the contextual and cultural influences on persons; and how the field of educational psychology informs and advances our understanding of learning and teaching.

Pressley and Roehrig (2002) provided a synopsis of the major domains reflected in the field of Educational Psychology during the past 40 years of the 20th century. These researchers categorized all research articles published in the 1960–1961 and the 1997–1998 issues of the Journal of Educational Psychology, the leading journal serving the field. Domains of information reflected in three contemporary handbooks, texts were also categorized, and editorial board members of the Journal of Educational Psychology were surveyed for their opinions of texts and articles that had the most significant impact on the field. The consensus of these reviews is amazingly similar in that at least 11 consistent domains appear: cognition; learning; development; motivation; individual differences; teaching and instruction; classroom and sociocultural processes; social relations in education; psychological foundations of curriculum; educational technology; and educational research methods and assessment.

These authors also noted that behaviorism and then the cognitive revolution were two critical forces driving the field, with the former more prevalent before the 1960s and the latter dominating the past 40 years (Pressley & Roehrig, 2002). Many significant changes were noted that led up to this change, beginning with the idea that an internal processing system and internal mechanisms could be objectified and studied (Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960, Plans and the Structure of Behavior) and followed by work centered on memory (Tulving & Donaldson, 1972), imagery (Levin, 1973; Paivio, 1971) and other learning processes (Rohwer, 1970; Schank & Abelson, 1977).

Instructional theory and innovations were impacted by Bruner's writings (1960, 1966), as well as the work of Hunt (1961) and Flavell (1963), who together with others (Brainerd, 1978; Inhelder, Sinclair, & Bovet, 1974) helped introduce and transform Piaget's ideas into work on children's thinking. Other's work was more directly linked to educational application, especially in regards to observational and social learning, (Bandura, 1969; Rosenthal & Zimmerman, 1978), text comprehension (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Kintsch, 1989), writing (Flower & Hayes, 1980), problem-solving and mathematics (Mayer, 1976; Polya, 1957; Schoenfeld, 1985).

Sociocultural and cross-cultural contexts were introduced as important factors influencing learning and cognition. Schooling and other critical contexts have been more prominent in the field since the pioneering work of Scribner and Cole in the 1980s and the influence of Vygotsky's work with the 1978 translation of Mind and Society. This work has helped to reconceptualize instruction and teacher training, as well as related domains of cognitive psychology. It has moved the field from an individual focus to a broader interpersonal framework. Much of the current research reflects the idea that the child, adults and the contexts surrounding an event are responsible for forwarding cognitive activity and building competence. These ideas have been inspired by Vygotskian theory and have contributed to substantial reforms reshaping contemporary school environments. They have had a direct impact on the design of instruction and have had a profound influence on educational research innovation. The linkages between theory and teacher learning, teacher and student relation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Editorial Board
• Handbook of Psychology Preface
• Volume Preface
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: Educational Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives
• Chapter 2: Contemporary Theories of Intelligence
• Chapter 3: Self-Regulation and Learning
• Chapter 4: Metacognition, Learning, and Instruction
• Chapter 5: Motivation and Classroom Learning
• Chapter 6: Vygotsky and Sociocultural Approaches to Teaching and Learning
• Chapter 7: Moral-Character Education
• Chapter 8: Cooperative Learning and Achievement: Theory and Research
• Chapter 9: Relationships Between Teachers and Children
• Chapter 10: School Adjustment
• Chapter 11: Early Childhood Education: Improving Outcomes for Young Children and Families
• Chapter 12: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading Processes
• Chapter 13: Mathematical Learning
• Chapter 14: Engaged Learning With Digital Media: The Points of Viewing Theory
• Chapter 15: School Psychology
• Chapter 16: Gifted Education Programs and Procedures
• Chapter 17: The School-Related Behavior Disorders Field: A Source of Innovation and Best Practices for School Personnel Who Serve Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders
• Chapter 18: Learning and Pedagogy in Initial Teacher Preparation
• Chapter 19: Educational/Psychological Intervention Research Circa 2012
• Chapter 20: Educational Psychology and Educational Transformation
• Chapter 21: Future Perspectives in Educational Psychology
• Author Index
• Subject Index