ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains education and social psychology. It deals with many traditional problems examined from the perspective of social psychology, a discipline that has not been popularly or extensively applied to education. The book explores an exposition of some basic social psychological assumptions, perspectives and concepts, to empirical research and to theoretical formulations. Inevitably the book is selective in that some major areas of social psychology have been excluded as have even larger areas of the field that we call education. Broadly speaking, social psychology is the study of interpersonal relations and small group behaviour. The boundaries of the discipline, which lies between the two giants of the human sciences, sociology and psychology, are fortunately very blurred. Social psychology deals with the exciting area of human behaviour, the structure and dynamics of relationships between people, or interpersonal relations.
