Introduction
Educational systems in today’s world have become highly complex. No single approach to learning can work for everyone. Due to this reason, educational psychologists from the field of education focused more on methods of learning for a better understanding of people’s detainment and absorption of new information (APA, 2014).
Educational Psychology
‘Educational psychology is the branch of psychology that studies people’s learning processes from their early childhood to adolescence. It also studies their methods of teaching, processes of instructions & differences in individual learning’
Other disciplines like behavioral psychology, developmental psychology, and cognitive psychology are also incorporate into the field of educational psychology.
Importance of Educational Psychology in Education
For Teachers
Teachers are like philosophers to their students. Students take the guidance of teachers in studies as well as in solving their real-life problems. So, a teacher must be aware of students’ growth & development. Here, educational psychology plays its role i.e., it helps teachers to use a variety of different methods and techniques to ensure the learning process (Cherry, 2022) because it is the job of a teacher to bring out the hidden gem-like potentials from their students so that their potential won’t be wasted and utilize in a best possible way (Aggarwal, 2014)
Teachers understand students’ potential by assigning them some tasks that are related to projects or doing some writing like report writing or essay writing. When students find difficulty they take guidance from the internet where Psychology homework helps them in resolving their assignment-related queries. Students also take help from different sites on how to write a psychology essay and resolve this query also (peps-admin, 2018).
Sociology observes specific associations of humans in society via family, race, or religion. So, this field is also cover by institutes in educational psychology where students are some assignments related to tasks where they take guidance from Sociology homework help via the internet and does their assignments within the proper time frame and with an accurate description.
For Learners
As educational psychology studies factors impacts on students related to social groupings, home environment, peer groups, sentiments related to emotions, and mental hygiene. So in order to get the desired data, various methods and techniques are use on students to see their mentality & behavior in the aforementioned environments.
How Educational Psychology works
Factors that are situational in nature studies in educational psychology, which include management of the classroom environment and the maintenance of discipline. Besides that, it also covers factors that how audio-video aids play their role in the teaching-learning processes facilitation.
Facilitates curriculum development
It helps the curriculum developers to develop the content in a way that proves to be useful for the teachers in students learning processes. The educational psychology curriculum must address the following competencies:
- Learning process
- Motivation
- Intelligence
- Special education
- Elementary statistics in education
- Factors related to individual differences like environment & heredity
- Individual growth & development &
- Elementary research techniques
When considering a problem researchers within educational psychology take on different perspectives which include influential learning factors related to experiences, cognition (factors such as emotions, beliefs & motivation that affect the learning process) & learned behavior (based on operant conditioning principles).
Now, talking about how researchers in educational psychology use different techniques or methods to collect data from the respective audience. So to propose new advancements in this field.
The various techniques to collect data include introspection (uses one’s own experience of the subject), observation (involves the observation of human and animal behavior in a particular environment), clinical method (involves studying different cases to detect different problems), survey or differential methods (involves an in-depth study of a group/person), and scientific or experiential methods (use of systematic approach to do a subjective and objective study of human behavior).
The researchers that played a pivotal role in the educational psychology field include:
- John Lock developed the idea which relates to the development of knowledge, according to which knowledge is develop through learning & experience.
- Jean Piaget also known for his cognitive-developmental theory. His influence on educational psychology is still see today.
- F. Skinner developed the Operant conditioning concept which highly influences the perspectives of behaviorists. The research that he conducted on punishment & reinforcement still plays a significant role in education.
Conclusion
Research that has been conducted in the past shows very well that educational psychology offers great valuable insights into people’s learning processes, making of educational strategies (like curriculum development), and the variety of teaching techniques used by teachers. This field helps teachers to initiate learning processes, help to motivate students, help to memorize things, and after memorizing implement those things in a particular direction.
Students see their teachers as a philosopher and believe that they will guide them in the right direction. So, through educational psychology teachers learned their behavior patterns and act according to differences in individual patterns because no two individuals are the same. Every individual is different from another so do their learning processes.
Thus, if we talk about the limitations of educational psychology, so we sees that, it provides help to a teacher in better understanding of problems related to children’s development. The way the teacher understands the educational problems depends upon his/her own experiences. As educational psychology deals with the environment & children’s nature and both of these are unstable. One person can behave differently when subjected to different situations, it just provides the basic guidelines and its generalizations are not exact as the natural sciences’ generalizations. So, further research is need in this regard.
References
Aggarwal, J. C., 2014. Essential of Educational Psychology. 3rd ed. Delhi: Visas Publishing House.
APA, 2014. Understanding Educational Psychology. [Online].
Cherry, K., 2022. What is Educational Psychology? [Online]
Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-educational-psychology-2795157#:~:text=Educational%20psychology%20is%20important%20because,learning%2C%20and%20improve%20student%20motivation.
Peps-admin, 2018. Make Psychology Essay Next Big Thing. [Online]
Available at: https://www.professionalessayservice.co.uk/make-psychology-essay-next-big-thing/
