Educational Psychology

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AN INTRODUCTION Although the field of educational psychology is concerned with all the psychological aspects of the educational process, its primary goal is to discover how people learn. Many Educational psychologists have conducted numerous experiments on animals and humans to determine the process of learning. •

Behaviourism Behaviorists believe that learning is the result of experience which can be observed and tested over and over again in the same way as in any other scientific experiment. J.B.Watson (1878-1956) Watson is one of the strong believers of behaviorism which is based upon laboratory experiments conducted on animals. According to him and other behaviorists, an event occurring in the environment is called stimulus and the behavior the individual exhibits is called the response. Behavioral Psychologists have conducted experiments on animals to determine how the stimulus-response bonds (S-R bonds) lead to learning. By repeating the experiments, they found out that the S-R bonds are strengthened when they are repeated and attain a stage called conditioning. It means that the individual becomes associated with stimulants in the environment so that whenever the stimulus occurred the behavior occurred. A dog’s salivation when food was presented was observed to repeat every time the stimulus occurred. Watson believed that learning happened as a result of the repeated formation of SR bonds. He also believed that the results of the experiments conducted on animals hold good for humans as well. His belief was such strong that once he said, ‘Give me a dozen healthy children and I will guarantee to take anyone at random and make him or her to be any type of specialist- a doctor, engineer, lawyer, artist, merchant, chief, thief or even a beggar.’ Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) Watson seems to have been inspired by Pavlov’s experiments on animals including the experiment on the salvation of the dog. The dog in the above experiment was made to respond to the arrival of meat powder by salivating. The experiment showed that at first the dog salivated when it saw the food but after a number of repetitions it was found that the dog started salivating even when it heard the footsteps of the feeder arriving. This type of response is called a conditioned response. Similarly, the sound of the feeder’s footsteps was called conditioned stimulus.7 More experiments were conducted using children to find out that a conditioned stimulus leads to a conditioned response. An example is that a child may not only

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refuse to go to a doctor who gave a painful injection several times but also will be scared when he saw the doctor’s clinic. Thorndike (1874-1949) He is said to be one of the greatest Educational Psychologists who believed that some behavior was attributed to natural reflexes like salivating or sudden removal of the hand from heat but there is another behavior due to stimulus found in the environment. From his experiments (mostly on animals) Thorndike also found that stimulus occurring after the behavior helped to learn. He presented the stimulus (food pellets) to pigeons after they walked along the required line and found that rewarding at the right responses-initiated learning. Similarly, not providing food pellets for wrong responses (punishment) reduced unwarranted behavior, considerably. B.F.Skinner Skinner too believed only environmental factors affect behavior and rejected any involvement of emotions, consciousness, motives, and intentions as only biproducts and not major factors pertaining to learning. Most of Skinner’s experiments were also with animals like cats and white rats. The stimuli occurring after the behavior are called reinforcers. Rewards or pleasant reinforcers result in positive reinforcement and which enhance learning while punishment or unpleasant reinforcers reduce learning, rather remove what had already been learned. It may help in removing undesirable behavior. Skinner’s work shows that a process called stimulus generalization happens where the individual begins to apply the same behavior at similar situations such as a child using the experience, he got at the classroom 10 times 4 is equal to 40 at a shop to pay 40 cents for 4 pieces of items each of which costs 10 cents. •

A cognitive theory of learning Jean Piaget (1896-1980) believed children are active learners and behave like little scientists who develop their own theories about how the world works and set out to confirm their beliefs. This is in great contrast to the behaviorist version that children are passive learners who merely react to the stimuli of the environment. Piaget uses several ‘technical terms’ to name various stages of learning. Many times, the subjects of his experiments were his own children. The word he uses for the already existing understanding is schema (Plural- schemata). It is the mental representation of what one has learned responding to the environment When new learning comes the child tries to fit them into already existing schemata. This process, Piaget called assimilation. A child may have had a belief that Santa Claus comes through the chimney but due to conflicting stories by other children, he may try to change his belief as Santa Claus is somebody who

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comes from outside, by assimilating new evidence. However, at a later stage, he may find his father or a family member dressing up as Santa Claus and he would accommodate the new information to change his previous belief to a new belief. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development Stage

Age range

Major Characteristics

Sensorimotor

Birth to 2 years

Preoperations

2 to 6-7 years

Increased goal-directed behavior Object performance Egocentrism Collective monologues Magical thinking Parallel play Dramatic play Centration

Concrete Operations

Formal operations

6-7 to 11-12

Classification Seriation Transitivity Conservation Class inclusion Decentration

11-12 and older

Abstract thinking Scientific reasoning Hypothesis testing Adolescent egocentrism Adolescent disentrenchment

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