Relevance of Educational Psychology for the Teacher

The role of the teacher is to nurture the child as per his nature. The teacher is to acquire sufficient knowledge of different psychological aspects. The teacher must be trained on different aspects of education and psychology to give a psychological treatment to the child.

Pestalozzi wanted to psychologize education. A teacher must have the knowledge of psychology to develop the potentialities and personality of the child. It is possible if a teacher has sufficient knowledge regarding the contributions of psychology to education. When psychology is applied in the field of education it is termed as educational psychology. Educational psychology helps the teacher to understand the following

1. Whom to teach — (Child)
2. Who is to teach — (Teacher)
3. What to teach — (Subject-matter)
4. How to teach — (Various approaches)
5. When to teach — (Motivational aspects)

The study of educational psychology helps the modem teacher to understand child, how to grow, develop, learn and adjust in an educational situation. Without the knowledge of educational psychology, a teacher cannot take or fulfill the responsibilities of an ideal teacher.

Educational psychology equips a teacher with necessary skills to face the present situation in a systematic manner and makes educational environment live. The following aspects are to be considered to justify the importance of educational psychology for a teacher.

 

1. To understand the child — The teacher should know the nature of the child, his interests, attitudes, needs and capacities. It helps to study his behavioural, motivational and psychological problems in order to provide sufficient helping hand, guidance in the educational situation.

 

2. To understand individual differences — Every individual is a unique one. Each individual is different physically, mentally, emotionally and socially. There is an intra and inter individual difference of psychological aspects between two individuals. So a teacher has to with different minds. He should possess sound knowledge in psychology in order to cater to the problems of individual difference.

 

3. To understand developmental characteristics — A child has to pass through different developmental stages i e. infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Each stage comes with some unique psychological features. So a teacher must be trained about the developmental characteristics of each Stage and to instruct accordingly. In his way he can his child and provide adequate guidance at each stage.

 

4. To follow effective methods of teaching — A teacher has to follow different techniques, approaches and methods to train the child in the classroom situation. So should he should refresh his knowledge in different new methods and techniques to maximize teaching-leaking effect.

 

5. To understand learning process — Learning is a complex task. Education depends upon learning. So, the complex learning process is simplified through theories and rules of learning developed by psychologists and researchers. The process is also ever-changing and developing. Therefore, a teacher should know educational psychology to study the changing process of learning.

 

6. To understand the nature of classroom learning — Educational psychology a teacher to adopt the techniques of learning to solve adjustment problems of the child in the educational situation. A teacher faces multifarious problems in the classroom presenting instruction. So, knowledge of educational psychology helps him to relate his skill of teaching to boost the teaching-teaming situation by solving complex problems of the classroom.

 

7. To measure learning outcomes — A teacher has to evaluate his students by employing various psychological tests. Learning outcomes can be evaluated through some systematic and standardised techniques. These should be properly mastered by the teacher Now stress is given to continuous comprehensive evaluation. Learning outcomes show the performance of ones in teaching-teaming situation.

 

8. To develop curriculum — A teacher should know different psychological principles in formulating suitable curriculum for different stages of the education. While preparing a curriculum a particular stage he should give priority to the needs and developments of the child and requirements of the society and changes in learning situation.

 

9. To reduce maladjustment — The aim of education is to prepare a child to live with educational psychology studies the adjustment problems of the children and their causes and consequences and train a teacher to check the child from maladjustment. It helps to bring necessary changes in the academic environment for better adjustment.

 

10. To promote good mental health — Educational psychology helps a teacher to create a healthy mental environment for effective teaching-learning process. A teacher should be mentally fit and sound enough so that he can develop a sound mental health among children. He should identify the cause of the factors for mental problems and maladjustment and take necessary steps to eliminate these.

 

11. To develop scientific attitude— A teacher should develop positive, scientific attitude in the educational practice and be objective and rational in performing his educational duties. He should check outdated, conventional, orthodox ideas in his thinking and practice. So educational psychology helps the teacher to develop such habit in building scientific attitude among children.

 

12. To guide exceptional children — In a democratic educational system a teacher cannot neglect the exceptional children having special needs. So he should be sufficiently trained in the needs, development and problems of the above category. Educational psychology assists the teacher with its new methodology and techniques to give guidance and suggestions to these challenged children. These children include physically and mentally, gifted, learning disabled and retarded.

 

13. To solve problem of discipline — The learners sometimes create indiscipline in the classroom. The teacher has to know the cause of indiscipline and the method how to check indiscipline attitude of the learners through the study of educational psychology.

 

14. To organise co-curricular activities — The role of the teacher is to bring an all-round development in the child. So in the school, he should provide adequate facilities for co-curricular activities like literary activities, drama, discussion, social service activities, games and sports, leisure time activities, music, song, programmes, picnics etc. for a balanced and harmonious development of children. Therefore, educational psychology helps the teacher to master in different skills and activities and to devise suitable activity for the child taking his developmental characteristics.

 

15. To produce suitable text-books — Educational psychology helps the teacher to produce suitable text-books and other reading materials as per the need and requirement of the child having different psychological characteristics. At the time of production of texts he should laid emphasis on the intellectual maturity of the children.

 

16. To promote democratic administration —Teacher is a democratic administrator and manager of total educational affair. So educational psychology helps the teacher to follow pupil-centric, democratic leadership practices in order to give a democratic shape to the educational system.

 

17. To provide education to the parents — During childhood period, parents should have knowledge on educational psychology in order to understand the process of growth and development of their child. They have to provide a conducive environment for their sound development. Parents are the first teacher for the child. So they should control the home environment for a free growth of their child.

 

18. To promote educational research — Educational psychology equips a teacher with different developing tools and research devices for measuring and evaluating the learner and the learning process and situation periodically. It is an important task to influence the behaviour of the learner and teacher and to bring changes in the educational system.

 

19. To understand group dynamics — Group dynamics means the change of behaviour of an individual though interaction in the group. So a teacher should know the operating of group dynamics in the classroom situation to bring necessary changes in the individual behaviour. It can be studied by sociometric technique.

 

20. To develop character and personality — The sole goal of the teacher is to develop the character of the child. So educational psychology helps the teacher to know the process in which way he will shape the character of the child. He should inculcate moral and good character.

 

21. To use innovations and projects — For the development of the educational process and teaching-learning environment, various innovations in psychology and education are being introduced. The research findings and projects of the innovative ideas are the guidelines for a classroom teacher to bring some changes with tune to changing educational environment. Some examples are micro teaching, programmed instruction, Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI), grading system, team teaching etc.

 

Educational psychology is very helpful to parents and teachers for the development of the child as a whole. It develops a positive attitude among the parents and teachers to love the child and protect the child from outside dangers which are uncertain and unwanted due to environmental influence.