Learning and Teaching

This is an introductory text-book in Education. It is designed primarily for Students in Training Colleges who are preparing for an examination in the Principles of Education, but it is hoped that it will also prove useful and interesting to teachers in school who wish to keep in touch with modern developments in educational psychology and methods. The book is based on experience in teaching Psycology and the Principles of Education in Several training colleges over a period of many years, an experience that has been supplemented by educational and psychological research, and by experience in teaching children in many schools of different types. We have attempted to weave into one coherent whole the subject-matter which we have found to be appropriate for a training-college course and which from our wide experience in schools we have also found to be of most value to young teachers. We believe that if psychology is studied in close connexion with the problems that arise in school and classroom it can give teachers a great deal of valuable help. We have therefore developed our subject by considering children and the practical problems they present rather than by discussing the theoretical problems of academic psychology. We have written as simply and directly as possible, but we have tried to avoid the dangers of over-simplification by calling attention to controversial and difficult matters in footnotes. No study of psychology and education can be real and fruitful unless it is combined with first-hand observation and experimentatioin. Suggestions for observations and simple experiments have therefore been made throughout the book. Many topics that could not be adequately dealt with owing to lack of space are referred to in the suggestions for discussion and further reading. The book is, in facat, a text-book in the original sense of the term; it provides a text which it is hoped will prove a convenient starting-point for a more exhaustive enquiry into the psychology, principles and methods of education.