Take one area of the learning sciences. How does educational psychology contribute to our understanding? What evidence does it offer? What interpretative concepts and theories does it provide?

As we all know, Education Psychology is a branch that studies how people learn and retain knowledge. Psychologists apply psychological science to improve the learning process. Psychologists working in education study the social, emotional and cognitive processes involved in learning and apply their findings to improve the learning process.

The education psychology theory that I am considering is Experientialism. David A Kolb and Carl Rogers are key theorists who formulated this theory. According to this theory, meaningful experience is the central factor in increasing learner’s knowledge and understanding as well as transforming their behavior.

I am a middle school and high school Physics teacher. I was teaching the concept of “Moment of Inertia” to my 8th graders. The students were supposed to balance a see-saw with different masses provided to them. They were given time to work with the material and interact with their peers. They were supposed to find a relation between the masses and the distances at which these masses are placed from the fulcrum. As I saw my students working, I could observe that they tried many different ways to get the result. They initially predicted the position at which the masses had to be placed, then they checked their predictions by actually placing the masses, analyzed the result, and then formulated new ideas.

Here the student is continuously constructing his/her knowledge through experience. Experiential learning can be conceptualized as a process with several components: students have an experience (Concrete Experience), reflect on observations about that experience (Reflective Observation), analyze responses and formulate new ideas (Abstract Conceptualization), and then actively test these new ideas in new situations (Active Experimentation) (Kolb & Kolb, 2005).

Many students find it difficult to comprehend information and retain knowledge from regular classroom instruction alone. An experiantial learning enables them to assimilate information methodically and internalize the concept.

https://www.psychology.org/resources/educational-psychology-theories

https://www.verywellmind.com/experiential-learning-2795154