Week 4, Option #1

In my 4th update, I would like to share my knowledge and thoughts about the contributions of educational psychology to learning.

Educational psychology encompasses how an individual learns and retains information or how an individual teaches. Supported primarily by psychology, educational psychology is connected with medicine and biology. To a great extent, it informs educational studies such as: “instructional design, educational technology, curriculum development, organizational learning, special education and classroom management.” (Cited from https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_educational_psychology)

Educational psychology not only researches learning of the students in general population, also it is concerned with gifted learners and the ones with disabilities or learning challenges. Learning capacity or process of the learners in childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age are taken into consideration. Artificial and sterile research environments, which are created by psychologists, provided fruitful results and these results have been interpreted and used in educational psychology. These results also led to development of grand theories. They are the behaviorist, the developmental, the cognitive (constructivist) and the (social) constructivist perspective. Educational psychologists distinguish the individual constructivism of Piaget from social constructivism of Vygotsky.

These grand theories and diverse approaches provide us with an insight into the phenomenon “learning” and how learning develops and, of course, they have their own strengths and limitations. So, it will be so detrimental to say that one theory is the absolute one. We can take advantage from all them, because each has some contributions to have us understand “learning” possible. Their fundamentals rely on the experiments, which were conducted in laboratories or in controlled groups. Focus point of the theories vary, “nurture vs. nature” debate is one of the most distinctive instances about it. Both behaviorists and constructivists acknowledge the relevance of both facts, however their main focus is different. The third theory, social constructivism, is a social-based one. It includes social context, in which knowledge is constructed. Individuals learn in communities, accommodation and assimilation happen in a collaborative way. So, students learn in group activities collaboratively (See the Table https://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/learning-overview/).

In the aspect of children’s language development, B. F. Skinner believed that children learn language through operant conditioning, here, reinforcement with the help of rewards play a role. On the contrary, Piaget suggested that children develop mentally, before they acquire a language. Accommodation and assimilation procedures are necessary for language development. Developed by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, (social) constructivism emphasizes the relevance of social learning and the zone of proximal development (ZPD).

In today’s schools, education is not a simple event to deal with an absolute approach. The educational institutes have much more tasks, goals, challenges and points to consider today, where education is getting much more complicated. The number of the students have increased with their own unique needs and their own strengths and limitations. So, it will be wise to benefit from all of these perspectives.

References:

Social Constructivism. Berkeley Graduate Division. Retrieved from: https://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/social-constructivism/

Overview of Learning Theories. Retrieved from: https://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/learning-overview/

Mayer, E. Richard. What Good is Educational Psychology? The Case of Cognition and Instruction. Educational Psychologist, 36(2), 83-88. Retrieved from: https://orion2020.org/archivo/cen/EPE3_Mayer.pdf

Human Language Development. Retrieved from: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-hostos-childdevelopment/chapter/human-language-development/

Educational Psychology, APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved from: https://dictionary.apa.org/educational-psychology

Piagetian Theory, APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved from: https://dictionary.apa.org/piagetian-theory

Learning, Knowledge and Human Development. Retrieved from: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-knowledge-human-development/lecture/KxR2D/foundations-of-educational-psychology-conditioned-reflex-behaviorism-and-human

Introduction to Educational Psychology. Retrieved from: https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_educational_psychology