ABSTRACT
There is a long history of optimism about how psychology in general and educational and developmental psychology in particular might contribute to child rearing and education. The flavour of the early enthusiasm by educators with a developmental or psychological perspective is captured by John Dewey’s lectures in 1899 to an audience of parents interested in the University of Chicago’s own experimental elementary school:
The school is a laboratory of applied psychology. That is, it has a place for the study of mind as manifested and developed in the child and for the search after materials and agencies that seem most likely to fulfill and further the condition of normal growth.
