ABSTRACT
Few contemporary psychologists would regard psychology as a branch of education, as James Mill implied in the early nineteenth century. But few who were familiar with the history of psychology as an independent academic discipline would fail to recognise the historical and continuing links between psychology and education. In this chapter I will consider the historical and contemporary relationship between education and psychology, by bringing together the key points which have been raised in the previous two chapters. In chapter 2, I examined education as a practical field which has theoretical needs. Amongst these needs are basic assumptions about the nature of learning, teaching and the learner, what were called meta-psychological assumptions. I also explored the issues about a scientific basis for the art or craft of teaching. This led into the third chapter in which I analysed basic questions about the nature of psychology and the kind of science it can claim to be. The diversity of the field and the incompatibility of its different traditions were presented as threatening its coherence. Part of this tension is between applied and socalled pure psychology. In this chapter I examine whether there is a special relationship between psychology and education.
