Educational Psychology: Nature, Growth and Development
The exam tests psychological vocabulary applied to the classroom: definitions, methods, the growth-versus-development distinction, principles of development, and stage theories with their educational implications.
Nature and scope
Educational psychology is the scientific study of the learner's behaviour in educational settings. It is a positive science (it describes) rather than purely normative. Its scope covers the learner, the learning process, learning situations, the teacher and evaluation. Methods include observation, experiment, case study, survey, interview and standardised testing; introspection is historically important but unreliable.
Growth and development
Growth is quantitative, measurable and stops at maturity. Development is quantitative and qualitative, orderly, continuous and lifelong. Principles: development is continuous and sequential; it proceeds cephalocaudally (head to tail) and proximodistally (centre to periphery); it moves from general to specific; it shows individual differences; it results from heredity interacting with environment; rates vary between children.
Stage theories
- Piaget: sensorimotor (0-2, object permanence), preoperational (2-7, egocentrism, no conservation), concrete operational (7-11, conservation, seriation, reversibility), formal operational (11+, hypothetico-deductive reasoning).
- Kohlberg: preconventional (punishment-obedience, instrumental exchange), conventional (good boy, law and order), postconventional (social contract, universal principles).
- Erikson: adolescence is identity versus role confusion.
- G. Stanley Hall: adolescence as "storm and stress"; peer group and hero worship dominate.
Worked example
A child sees two identical glasses with equal water; water from one is poured into a tall narrow glass. The child says the tall glass "has more". Diagnosis: preoperational stage, failure of conservation. Reasoning: the child centres on one dimension (height) and lacks reversibility; a concrete-operational child would conserve.
Traps that cost marks
Writing that growth is qualitative; reversing cephalocaudal and proximodistal; presenting Piaget's stages out of order; attributing identity versus role confusion to Kohlberg instead of Erikson.