Advance Educational Psychology

Long before educational psychology became a formal discipline, scholars were concerned about what people think and do as they teach and learn. The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle discussed topics still studied by educational psychologists-the role of the teacher, the relationship between teacher and student, methods of teaching, the nature and order of learning, the role of affect in learning. In the 1500s the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives emphasized the value of practice, the need to tap student interests and adapt instruction to individual differences, and the advantages of using self-comparisons rather than competitive social comparisons in evaluating students work. In the 1600s the Czech theologian and educator Johann Amos Comenius introduced visual aids and proclaimed that understanding, not memorizing, was the goal of teaching. Writings of European Philosophers and reformers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau Johann Heinrich Pestalozz, Johann Friedrich Herbart and Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel stressed the value of activity, prior experience and interest. All these ideas are consistent with current work in educational psychology.