Gardner, H. (2000). The disciplined mind: Beyond facts and standardized tests, the education that every child deserves. Penguin Books.

However, it was not until later in history that educational psychology emerged as a field in its own right, distinct from philosophy. This is just a small sample of the work that EPs do. If you want to know more, talk with your EP. Educational psychologists work in a variety of contexts Bradshaw, C. P., Waasdorp, T. E., & Leaf, P. J. (2012). Effects of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports on child behavior problems. Pediatrics, 130(5), e1136–e1145. Cognitivists are keenly interested in a neuronal or a brain-to-behavior perspective on learning and memory. Their lines of research often include studies involving functional brain imaging (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging) to see which brain circuits are activated during specific learning tasks. Cognitivism was partly inspired by the development of computers and an information-processing model believed to be applicable to human learning (Neisser, 1967).Evolution of the total number of citations and journal's self-citations received by a journal's published documents during the three previous years. Plato’s foremost pupil, Aristotle, emphasized how learning involves building associations such as succession in time, contiguity in space, and similarities and/or contrasts. Plato believed that learning is based on the mind’s innate capacity to receive information and judge its intellectual and moral value. As noted above, early Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were concerned with the learning process, for factual and moral knowledge. They conduct research on topics such as the best measure of literacy skills for students in secondary education, the most effective method for teaching early career professionals in engineering, and the relationship between education level and emotional health in retirees.

In these stages, we match our basic concepts, or “schemas,” of reality with experiences in the world and adjust our schemas accordingly. Sometimes there is a big focus on an ‘EP report’ because there can be an assumption that EPs are gatekeepers to something called Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), or places at a special school. This is not the case. The information provided by an EP is designed to identify a child’s strengths and needs, and then describe the types of things that should be in place to make sure that a child’s needs are met. An EP report can details what was agreed during the EP’s work, and it can help people to make decisions but it shouldn’t say whether a child should receive an EHCP or what school they should go to. Yeomans, M., & Reich, J. (2017). Planning prompts increase and forecast course completion in massive open online courses. Conference: The Seventh International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference, pp. 464–473. We should note that behaviorists believe in a pre-set, external reality that is progressively discovered by learning. It can be useful if a teacher watches an EP carry out a dynamic assessment – lots of what they observe will be directly relevant for the classroom. Cognitive tests usually can’t be observed. “We need an EP report” It’s important to think about why you need an EP report and what you hope it will do or give you.Dr Deborah Churchill, Dr Amanda Gaulter, Dr Sue Roffey, Dr Cathy Atkinson, Dr Mary Stanley-Duke, Dr Will Shield, Dr Emily France, Dr Adrianne Reid, Dr Amy Such, Dr Jen Waite Early intervention can be powerful, though sometimes people can wait until a situation feels at crisis point before requesting EP involvement. Simonsen, B., & Myers, D. (2015). Classwide positive behavior interventions and supports: A guide to proactive classroom management. Guilford Publications.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, career opportunities in psychology will grow at a healthy rate of about 14% over this decade, and educational psychology is expected to keep pace.

Subject Area and Category

Today, there are many programs across the world providing quality training in educational psychology at the master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral levels. The ZPD is the area between what a learner (student, adult trainee, rehabilitation patient, etc.) can already do on their own and what the learner can readily accomplish with the help of teachers or more advanced peers.

Those with a doctorate in educational psychology have potential for a broad impact on learners of any and every type. They often teach at the college or university level, conduct research and publish on various topics in the field, or consult with various organizations about the best teaching and learning methods. Educational psychologists are more involved in teaching and research at the college or university level. They also focus on larger and more diverse groups in their research and consulting activities. Such proactive behavioral supports include maximizing structure in classrooms, teaching clear behavioral expectations in advance, regularly using prompts with students, and actively supervising students (Simonsen & Myers, 2015). They help with testing and supporting students with special needs, helping teachers develop classroom management strategies, and engaging in individual or group counseling, which can include crisis counseling and emotional–behavioral support. Together, these thinkers have formed the growing and diverse body of theory and practice of educational psychology, and this intriguing topic is what we will discuss below.EPs know that by the time they’re asked to work with adults, children and young people, ‘the problem’ can be or seem complex and messy. Often we’re asked to work in situations where the problem has been around for a long time. Although the people we work with often really want the problem to stop or go away, it wouldn’t be fair to arrive at a school and assume that there are easy actions that need to happen and everything will be fine. This often leads people to feel like an EP hasn’t listened or fully understood how serious the problem is. This theory states that besides the traditionally measured verbal and visual–spatial forms of intelligence, there are also forms that include kinesthetic or athletic intelligence, interpersonal or social–emotional intelligence, musical or artistic intelligence, and perhaps other forms we have not yet learned to measure.