ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the contribution of psychology to thinking about primary education. Psychology is regarded by many educationalists as: the oldest and largest of the foundation disciplines in the study of education, dealing with important issues of relevance to the teacher. The Behaviourist tradition in psychology, sees the child as passively receiving and reacting to stimuli. All behaviour, including language is viewed as learned by the reinforcement which the environment provides. The discussion of psychological traditions is concluded by reference to the work of Carl Rogers who advocates that learners need to be ‘free to learn’ and is an indication of humanism in psychology. The only learning which significantly influences behaviour Rogers argues, is that which is self-discovered, self-appropriated personal learning. The penultimate extract considers the complexity of matching learning tasks to children’s competence, and the section concludes by discussing recent developments in psychological research.
