Fundamentals of Educational Psychology

PREFACE

This revised edition is designed as a basic text in the courses on educational psychology. It has been entitled as “Fundamentals of Educational Psychology” because of its extensive treatment of educational process.

The content of educational psychology has increased over the years, then. Unfortunately, the time devoted to such a course in the teacher-preparation curriculum has not been correspondingly increased. Typically, materials on physical growth and development, social and emotional development, mental growth, motivation, learning, atypical children, mental hygiene, and so on, are included in a one-semester course. Though understanding of these areas may be necessary, and is certainly beneficial, to the teacher, the effect has been the superficial treatment with one course of materials which require intensive exploration. The authors have restricted the scope of this text of a limited number of classroom dimensions. Though the decision as to what variables to discuss was arbitrary, the choice does reflect material related to questions asked by both prospective and in-service teachers over several years of teaching courses in educational psychology.

There is very old and classical phrase ‘John Latin’ which is commonly used in the discipline of education. Here the term ‘John’ refers to a student. An effective teacher must known his student (John). To know his student implies physical, social emotional and mental qualities of his students. The psychological Characteristics of students play the significant role in educative process and in teaching learning situations. The teaching is organized for generating learning situations for bringing desirable behavioral changes among students. Thus a teacher should know his subject matter as well as the psychology of his students.

Several books are available on ‘Educational Psychology’ but the authors have given emphasis on theoretical aspects and concepts of psychology rather than classroom implications which is very essential for a teacher. The fundamentals of psychology are basic for organizing effective teaching learning process. An effort has been made