Chapter IX: Educational Psychology

Abstract

DURING THE PAST THREE YEARS investigations in the field of educational psychology were reported under various headings in issues of the REVIEW and elsewhere: teacher personnel, pupil personnel, mental hygiene, exceptional children (35)-perhaps the most significant work in this area being the delineation of endogenous and exogenous feeble-mindedness by Strauss and Werner (84)-growth and development (61), and intelligence (62). During this period the IQ controversy (94) ran rampant with a flutter of varicolored banderillas in its neck defying anyone to administer the coup de grace until the public realized it was witnessing not a struggle in the arena but a tempest in a teacup. Surveys in the REVIEW have likewise appeared, or will appear shortly, on appraisal and on the psychological aspects of the school subjects, where the most prolific work has been in reading (96), though the increase was noteworthy in psychological investigations in the esthetic aspects of learning, particularly in music (79) and in design (100). In this chapter some of the more significant studies in educational psychology are reported following those of the June 1939 issue of the REVIEW, but excluding the areas indicated above. Hence the material treated will relate to the whole school situation rather than to specific school subjects or activities. The Thought ProcessesConditioning, which came as an answer to the behaviorists' subvocal tensions, has been shown by Hilgard and Marquis (36) and others to be a more complex process than the classical Russian experimentation originally implied. Responses conditioned by different perceptual configurations suggest Gestalt organization (71) and raise the question of equivalence of stimulus patterns (72) that is discussed at length by Hull (39).Studies of transfer during the preceding six years were reported by Orata (64) who discounts "identity" and favors the more familiar explanatory phrases, "generalization" and the "reconstruction of experience." A so-called generalization method in arithmetic (90), which "emphasized the discovery and use of relationships existing among addition combinations," proved more effective than a drill method in which each combination was "a specific element with no relation to any of the other number facts." The various interpretations that can be given to generalization make it a convenient explanatory principle; but its scientific value, since its famous though elusive launching on the waters of the dart-throwing experiment, is now called into question. An effort to repeat the experi-345 at LAKEHEAD UNIV on March 17, 2015 http://rer.aera.net Downloaded from REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Vol. XII, No. 3