Teaching theories: educational psychology

Mental-discipline theories

The earliest mental-discipline theories of teaching were based on a premise that the main justification for teaching anything is not for itself but for what it trains—intelligence, attitudes, and values. By choosing the right material and by emphasizing rote methods of learning, according to that theory, one disciplines the mind and produces a better intellect.

In Greco-Roman antiquity, the ideal product of education was held to be a citizen trained in the disciplined study of a restricted number of subjects—grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. The mode of learning was based on imitation and memorizing, and there was heavy emphasis on the intellectual authority of the teacher. In later centuries, it was further taken for granted that the study of Greco-Roman literature and philosophy would have a liberalizing effect on the student.

In the hands of the Renaissance Dutch philosopher Erasmus and the Jesuits, that method of instruction took more sensitive account of the psychological characteristics of young learners. Understanding had to precede learning, and, according to the Jesuits, the teacher’s first task was careful preparation of the material to be taught (the prelection). But even with that greater awareness of the learner’s needs, the concept of mental discipline still underlay the whole process of instruction. Present-day critics of the classical-humanistic approach would challenge the alleged power of mental discipline and the rather exclusive value of Greco-Roman thought.

The theory of learning involving mental discipline is more commonly associated with the “faculty psychology” of Aristotle, by which the mind is understood to be composed of a number of faculties, each of which is considered to be relatively independent of the others. The principle had its origin in a theory that classified mental and spiritual life in terms of functions of the soul: knowing, feeling, hungering, reasoning, and doing. From the Middle Ages to the early 19th century, the number of recognized faculties grew and included those of judgment, duty, perception, and conception. Since those were associated with certain parts of the cranium by the phrenologists, it was a natural step to assume that learning would consist of the exercise of these “parts,” or mental capabilities (though the education of the senses also had a role, in initiating the rational cognitive processes). Certain school subjects were thought to have particular value as agents for exercising certain faculties. Geometry trained the faculty of reason, and history trained the memory. School subjects came to be valuable as much for what faculties they trained as for their own intrinsic worth. Such was the learning theory of formal discipline.

Psychological faculties, used as categories, no doubt influenced the study of so-called mental factors. When different cognitive tests are given and the results compared, similarities are found among all the tests and among smaller groups of them. The bases for the similarities are identified as mental factors, including the ideas of intelligence, reasoning, memory, verbal ability, number capacity, and spatial intelligence. The existence of common mental factors underlying different school subjects would support the idea of formal discipline and would lead to the notion of transfer of training, by which exercise in one school subject leads to improvements in learning of another. The transferred elements could be common facts, learning habits, methods of thinking, attitudes, and values.

Although much empirical research has been done on transfer of learning, it has yielded mixed results. Some workers hold that transfer has been possible only insofar as there have been identical elements, and even those who claim a transfer of methods generally insist that transfer has little chance of success unless it is actively explained and applied. Learners have to apply methods consciously to the new field in order to succeed. The opposing view would be that each subject is unique and requires its own mode of thought. A more realistic view may be intermediate—namely, that there is both a common and a specific element in each intellectual field, that mental discipline or transfer of training is to some degree possible but only insofar as the similarities and analogies are utilized, that the process is deliberate, and that a residue of specific subject matter remains in each field, which requires specific learning.

Naturalistic theories

A few educational theorists view the education of the child as an unfolding process. The child develops inevitably as a product of nature, and the main function of the teacher is to provide the optimum conditions for that development. That view leads to the theory that the child’s experience is the essential thing. A Swiss educator, J.H. Pestalozzi (1746–1827), was a leading theorist in that field, and his practical schemes were designed to provide the most appropriate experience for the child’s development. In a sense, the modern revival of the potency of experience is an acknowledgement of the developmental element in learning.

The 18th-century Swiss-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau also started from the assumption that humans conform to nature. Since, more than Pestalozzi, he assumed the certainty of a spontaneous development of powers and faculties, he urged that any form of constraint was to be avoided. Thus, it has been held that he saw humans as noble savages growing in isolation in a state of nature. But nature also means a social life. The consequences of Rousseau’s basic view have been (1) a reduced emphasis on knowing and greater emphasis on acting and doing, (2) a promotion of positive interests in learning, and (3) an encouragement of children to depend on their own resources. In their purest form, naturalistic theories are clearly inadequate in the modern world of technology, but their emphasis on spontaneous child activity, as opposed to excessive formal instruction, is a valuable component of the educational process.

Apperception theories

Another theory assumed that human learning consisted essentially of building up associations between different ideas and experiences; the mind, in accordance with the ideas of the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke, was assumed to be at first devoid of ideas. The 19th-century German philosopher Johann Herbart made an important contribution by providing a mental mechanism that determined which ideas would become conscious and which would be left in the subconscious, to be called upon if circumstances warranted it. Such was the mechanism of apperception, by which new ideas became associated with existing ideas to form a matrix of associated ideas called the apperception mass. New ideas were thus assimilated to the old. A 20th-century Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, argued that such assimilation was not enough, that accommodation of the established ideas to the new experiences was also required.

In any event, ideas such as Herbart’s were translated into a sequence of steps presumed to be required to carry out a lesson:

1. Preparation, whereby the teacher starts the lesson with something already known to the class

2. Presentation, introducing new material

3. Association, whereby the new is compared with the old and connected (the stage of apperception)

4. Generalization, whereby the teacher presents other instances of the new idea

5. Application, whereby the ideas are applied to further material, carried out by the child individually (a problem-solving phase)

Although these five steps give the teacher a clear role, they constitute a form of intellectual dominance and could lead to stereotyped lessons restricting the spontaneous creative learning by the pupil. Contemporary curricular revisions, on the contrary, aim at promoting pupil activity.