Educational Psychology

PREFACE

The report of UNESCO, International Commission on Education for the 21st Century, is titled ‘Learning the Treasure Within’. It proposed learning throughout life as one of the keys to meet the challenges of the twenty first century. The chair- person of this Commission, Jacques Delors appealed to use advances in knowledge to foster human development rather than to create further distinctions between people. He revealed that the Commission was unable to resist the temptation to add some new subjects for study, such as self-knowledge, ways to ensure physical and psychological well being.

At this juncture we have to review how important understanding of oneself is. Moreover, the very purpose of having psychological foundations to education is to develop desirable attitudes towards the psychology of learners at different stages of life and to develop thereby the subtle professional competencies in the prospective teachers to function rightly and responsibly.

The prospective teacher feels the dire necessity to observe himself to understand his capacities, interests, attitudes and tendencies to respond well. Likewise to be ready to understand his feelings of superiority or inferiority, his own imagined fears, anxieties, conflicts in school, family and elsewhere, frustrations, defenses he adopts and his weaknesses to be free of them in the light of wholistic understanding.

His enquiry about his relationships with co-teachers, with students and others make him to go further to discuss and smoothen them if there is any psychological friction and discomfort. His honesty finds whether he is clear and adequate in subject matter. Only then he can be ready to equip himself or herself with the recent developments in his/her field of teaching and general trends in education, to function fully and effectively.

S/he can be lively and make students participate in democratic classroom atmosphere to deal with the subject matter thoroughly without any inhibitions. A teachers understanding of the facts of his or her own self in scientific spirit leads him/her to master the art of teaching – learning.

The teacher can even use the principles of psychology in guiding the learners to learn about the outer world in the form of different academic subjects. Such a teacher can to provide for the total development of each child (all the cognitive faculties) starting from perception through independent thinking to problem-solving, for the development and expression of effective behaviours and appropriate actions, both at individual and collective levels.

– G. Aruna Mohan