Problematising Style Differences Theory and Professional Learning in Educational Psychology

Abstract

The conceptual basis for a model of professional learning in educational psychology is presented in this article. The approach is one aimed at an integration and application of theories of knowledge management with educational and organisational psychology in a pragmatic research methodology underpinning professional learning. The model focuses upon the idea of praxis and the working ideal of a 'thinking practitioner'. This is in turn applied to the development of individual differences theory as part of a critical revision problematising theory associated with researching style differences in cognition, learning and management. A need for critical revisionism, new directions in researching style differences and professional education is identified as part of an example illustrating a way to establish valid epistemic change and paradigm shift necessary for this development. The argument underpinning this approach, finally, concludes that the future is very much part of the past, as a knowledge source for informing contemporary professional learning thereby ensuring practice is not stuck in the present. The Psychology of Education and Educational PsychologyIn a conversation at the beginning of my PhD study, Richard Riding, my supervisor, commented that his interests lay in the psychology of education, and his work was most certainly not educational psychology. The distinction drawn might at first seem spurious, but on reflection, it inferred a great deal about the direction and focus of Riding's research (see Riding & Rayner, 1998). My subsequent understanding of his statement, moreover, is that it posits a view in which educational psychology requires a separate, distinctive and pragmatic perspective as well as a concern for utility and relevance not always pertinent in pure research or a theory of psychology. I do not agree. While it is crucial that disciplinary knowledge underpinning researchinformed practice and intervention should be valid, reliable and meaningful, its fit or co-relationship with the work of theory as a 'balanced and balancing consideration' in explaining both why and how to design 'learning instruction' is just as crucial.