Chapter 1: The Empirical

Beginnings and Basic Contents

of Educational Psychology
Educational Psychology
• A branch of psychology that studies children
in an educational setting and is concerned
with teaching and learning methods,
cognitive development, and aptitude
assessment.
Historical Background
• Quintillanus – he was a Roman educator
that his views on the bad effects of corporal
punishment and on the value of
comradeship, also his views stimulated
educational thoughts which had been
neglected during the middle ages.
• Erasmus and Rotterdam – agreed on Quintillanus’ views on
corporal punishment but denied categorically its moral
significance in education.

• Comenius – in 17th century he stressed the necessity of taking

the individuality of the child in consideration.

• Locke – expressed the view that the child has natural

inclinations and interest, but that should be curbed on account
of the sinful nation of man.
• Jean Jacque Rosseau – he stressed that “ the education of the
child was naturally a central scheme,” adults should not force
their opinions and behavior on children.

• Pestalozzi - “Man is good and strives to attain goodness, and if

he is vile, it is because the path of goodness is closed to him.”

• Herman Ebbinghaus – “Father of Learning Psychology” his

works lead him to draw two major conclusions:
• 1. Once everything is learned, it is not forgotten in an even rate. Most
of what is forgotten is lost very quickly and the rest at a slow and fairly
stable rate.
• In order to learn new material, it is more efficient to space practice than
to mass it.
• James Mckeen Catell – was the first one to use the now familiar term
“mental test”.

• Alfred Binet – defined intelligence as the ability to understand well, and

to judge well. He developed the first test battery in 1895 and used the
term “mental age” to describe his scoring technique.

• Edward Lee Thorndike – conducted the first experiments in maze

learning(with children) and puzzle box learning(with kittens) in 1898. He
also published a paper entitled, “ animal intelligence”. Also called as “Mr.
Psychology” in the united states.
• G. Stanley Hall – introduced new methods of obtaining information
about children. He began the systematic use of questionnaire. Also
contributed the psychology of adolescence.

• Jean Piaget – He formulated the most important and influential

theory of development. When a children ask “why” it is because they
think that each thing has a specific purpose. He conclude that reality
does not reach the individual outside from the outside world but
from within, from his own logic, with his dependent on the structure
of his mind.
• Arnold Gessel – was one of the first to advocate that growth and
development occur in unvarying sequence. He made the mistake
though of overgeneralizing from studying only a few children and he
presented an overly detailed “map” of development.
• James Sully – published his Outlines of Psychology with Special Refernces to the Theory of
Education in 1884.

• William James – his Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to students on Lifes’s Ideal in 1899.

• Edourd Claperede - his Experimental Pedagogy and the Psychology of the Child in 1905. He also
expanded three volumes of Thorndike First Educational Psychology in 1913.

• Heinrich E. Buchholz – founded the Journal on Educational Psycholgy in 1910. Binet’s final scale in
1911.

• Lewis M. Terman’s – the first group test, the Army Alpha and Beta, for testing recruits in World
War 1.