What is educational psychology? What is educational psychology?

Educational psychology is a science that studies the basic psychological laws of middle schools and situational teaching in schools.

Educational psychology is a branch of psychology that studies the psychological activities of educators and educatees in the process of education and teaching, as well as the laws of their emergence and change. It is an interdisciplinary subject of educational science and psychological science.

The content of educational psychology research is mainly the law of psychological activities in the process of school education, such as how students should master the knowledge in books, what is the relationship between students' learning motivation and academic performance, and what good review methods are available. Educational psychology became an independent subject at the end of19th century, but many educators in history have been able to carry out targeted teaching according to people's psychological state in educational practice.

Confucius, an ancient educator in China, put forward the heuristic teaching method of "if you don't get angry, you will be powerful, if you don't get angry, you will be sad, and if you don't get angry, you will be yourself". Socrates in ancient Greece also put forward the educational psychology thought that "I am not giving people knowledge, but a midwife who makes knowledge self-generated".

Thorndike published the book "Educational Psychology" in 1903, and explained the concept of learning in detail according to the school situation, thus making educational psychology an independent experimental science, which is the real beginning of modern educational psychology. 19 13 This book has been expanded into three volumes, including human nature, learning psychology, individual differences and their causes.

His three laws of learning (the law of effect, the law of preparation and the law of practice) and the theory of individual difference became important topics in educational psychology around the 1920s. Because Thorndike put the focus of educational psychology research on learning psychology, the educational psychology circle in China has always regarded learning psychology as the main object of educational psychology research for a long time.

After Pavlov's theory was introduced into China, it not only influenced the basic theory of psychology, but also influenced the educational psychology in 1950s. His two signal system theories provide a new theoretical basis for educational psychology, and also find the connection between educational psychology and natural science.

The second signal system theory makes children's speech and thinking the main object of educational psychology research. In order to meet the needs of the continuous development of education, the tasks of educational psychology are also increasing, and the scope of research objects is gradually expanding.

Educational psychology has paid attention to the study of learning psychology and the discussion of learning rules from the early stage, and mostly focuses on intellectual education. With the increasing emphasis on people's all-round development, education pays more and more attention to the cultivation of moral behavior, moral emotion and aesthetic emotion. The development of modern science, especially the development of modern biology, anthropology, sociology, medicine and psychiatry, has had an impact on educational psychology, prompting it to constantly update its content to meet the requirements of social development.

China puts the development of education in an important position, and the research of educational psychology has a very broad prospect. Supplementary note: Educational psychology, as its name implies, is a branch of psychology that studies the educational process. Simply put, educational psychology is the science of learning and teaching in all aspects. Specifically, there are the following aspects: First, the characteristics of teachers.

Educational psychology should first understand the executors of the educational process. Teachers' characteristics and their influence on the teaching process.

Whether you realize it or not, every teacher has his own set of teaching ideas and methods. Some teachers think that teaching means "teachers teach and students learn", so they adopt the spoon-feeding teaching method. However, some teachers think that students' initiative should be brought into play, and students should operate, find problems, ask questions and solve problems themselves, and learn and improve through activities. In addition, the study also found that teachers' personality characteristics will also affect the teaching process. Strict teachers tend to adopt traditional teaching methods, and the classroom atmosphere is not very active, while democratic and lively teachers are more willing to adopt new teaching methods and try more, so the classroom atmosphere is more active and students can express themselves more freely.

Second, the characteristics of students. As students, they all have their own set of "reading philosophy". Some children firmly believe that learning depends on accumulation, "stupid birds fly first and enter the forest early", and a sweat will naturally have a harvest; However, some children firmly believe that "there are seeds of wisdom", and it is useless for people who are born stupid to work hard. "The harder you work, the more clumsy you are", so they don't want to work hard at all, and they don't like the hard work of others.

Children with these two different ideas are different in learning. There may be no obvious difference between the subjects you have learned well and those you have achieved, but when you encounter subjects that are difficult, not good at learning and not interested, the former may continue to learn step by step, while the latter may give up soon, and the result will of course be very different. Education advocates "teaching students in accordance with their aptitude" and different education, different requirements and different teaching methods according to the different characteristics of students. Therefore, teachers must understand students' personality characteristics, learning motivation, learning ability and learning habits, so as to implement education in a targeted manner and make it play its greatest role.

Therefore, educational psychology must also understand the other half of the educational process. How different teaching methods affect different subjects and different teaching contents, and how teachers match teaching methods to achieve good teaching results are also the research contents of educational psychology.

The hands-on teaching method may be very useful for highly operational subjects such as physics and chemistry, but it may not be effective for subjects such as history and Chinese. For the same subject, different contents and the same teaching methods may have different functions.

For example, the teaching method of drama articles can be role-playing, but it is difficult to use this teaching method in ancient poetry and classical Chinese. Similarly, different teachers also have their own set of teaching methods, and lively teachers can get along better with students and use activity teaching methods more conveniently; It is difficult for a strict and unsmiling teacher to do this.

The same is true for students. Some students like to find problems by themselves, so the exploratory method is more suitable for these students, but for those students who don't like to use their brains and like the teacher to tell them the methods so that they can implement them step by step, this method is not suitable.

What is the main function of educational psychology?

It has the functions of description, explanation, prediction and control.

First, the theoretical role of educational psychology

It is of great theoretical significance to understand the basic psychological laws of middle schools for situational teaching in schools. First of all, educational psychology explores and reveals some psychological laws from the perspective of educational process, which not only enriches the general theory of general psychology, but also contributes to the theoretical development of the whole psychology. For example, the memory law displayed by students studying educational psychology in the process of learning knowledge is of great significance to the study of general psychology and even the whole human memory.

Second, the practical role of educational psychology

Humans can transform the world and create new things, mainly because people can constantly understand the development law of objective things in practice and act according to the objective laws. If teachers and educators want to make education and teaching more effective, they must constantly discover, grasp and correctly apply the laws existing in the process of education and teaching, including the psychological laws of learning and teaching revealed by educational psychology. Educational psychology, as an applied discipline, pays more attention to studying and revealing the specific laws existing in education and teaching practice, thus directly providing guidance for school education.

Third, the practical role of educational psychology is reflected in the following aspects:

1. Help the teacher understand the problem accurately.

2. Provide scientific theoretical guidance for practical teaching.

3. Help teachers predict and interfere with students.

4. Help teachers to conduct research in combination with teaching practice.