Is there a Discipline of Educational Psychology?

‘Is there such a discipline as educational psychology?’ is certainly not an irrelevant or irreverent question. On the contrary, it follows very pertinently if one examines many textbooks of educational psychology that were written during the past thirty years. In fact, judging from the conception of educational psychology – as a superficial, ill digested and typically disjointed and watered-down miscellany of general psychology, learning theory, developmental psychology, social psychology, psychological measurement, psychology of adjustment, mental hygiene, client-centred counselling and child-centred education put forward by these textbooks – one would be hard put not to give a negative answer to the question raised by the title of this paper.