Description
PSYCHOLOGY IN EDUCATION IS AN ATTEMPT TO RECOGNIZE and draw on four features which the writers believe are now of major importance as regards contributions of psychology to education.
First is the broadening and what might be called the coming-of-age of research in child development. Initially often preoccupied with infancy and the preschool years, child development is now tending to combine with the earlier somewhat separate work on adolescence; thus the growth years are seen in larger and more consistent perspectives. Understanding of de- velopment has been variously enriched, as by minutely detailed studies of physical growth, and the use of methods and material from sociology and cultural anthropology. And longitudinal studies that follow the growth of individuals, sometimes from infancy into adulthood, have revised certain earlier concepts-as in showing personality correlates of "early" and "late" maturing, and the possible substantial influence of environment on growth of ability. Part I of this book attempts a compact summary of our present knowledge regarding development in the first twenty years.
A second feature of the psychoeducational present is the seemingly heterogeneous mass of material on learning. Some educators have proceeded from recognizing individual dynamics in learning to advocating curricular content and methods that are sometimes so highly personal to each pupil in each class and for each teacher that, except when teachers have been especially adaptive and clever, the public and even the schools have been confused as to just what was or should be happening. Increasing emphasis has been put on the social aspects of learning. There are both advocacy and rejection of the position that the somewhat special types of learning involved in the building of social competence, leisure interests, character traits, and ideals are major concerns of the school. Meanwhile, somewhat in contrast, much of the extraordinary amount of recent psychological re- search on learning has become remote from classrooms and indeed from any other environment than the psychological laboratory.
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