Module 8: Applied Psychology
8.2. Psychology of education, creativity, management

Educational psychology is a field of psychology that develops the psychological foundations of education and upbringing. Like occupational psychology, engineering, military psychology, or clinical psychology, educational psychology is sometimes referred to as an applied branch of psychology that aims to solve practical problems. At the same time, the psychology of education is a field of both fundamental and applied research and uses pedagogical institutions as a psychological laboratory.

Educational psychology is taught at the pedagogical faculties of universities. The subject of the study of educational psychology is various behavioral manifestations related to the processes of learning and upbringing: the psychological characteristics of a child at different age stages; the ratio of mental development and learning, especially in relation to school subjects and classes; the problem of mental health, including difficulties in social adaptation; interaction of students in the classroom, school teams and groups; differences between differences in children's abilities and school performance, as well as the problem of measuring these differences.

Psychologists who specialize in parenting psychology teach this subject at universities and institutes, and are researchers in research institutes and laboratories, but most of them are school psychologists. Initially, school psychologists mainly engaged in test tests, primarily related to the Stanford-Binettest, the result of which is a well-known IQ indicator, and later with other tests. However, their responsibilities gradually expanded significantly to include advising students, teachers, school administrators, and parents. Educational psychologists can collaborate not only with schools and other educational institutions, but also with hospitals and institutions that provide various types of care, where they conduct psychological research, interpret the results of individual and group tests, and provide individual advice on various problems related to educational activities, career choice, and personal adaptation of children.

Educational psychology as an experimental scientific discipline appeared in the research of psychologists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hermann Ebbinghaus published the results of his experiments on memory in 1885. James Cattell, in an article that appeared in 1890, was the first to use the now widely known term "mental (psychological) test". He conducted a study of Columbia University freshmen using tests for sequential image occurrence, color vision, pitch perception, pain sensitivity, color preference, time and movement perception, movement accuracy, imagination, and memory. Alfred Binet, using various tasks, studied the possibilities of identifying mentally retarded children. He defined intelligence as the ability to understand well, reason well, and evaluate well; in 1895 Binet proposed his first set of tests. Edward Thorndike in 1898 conducted the first series of experiments on learning in a maze (with chickens) and in a problem box (with kittens). Stanley Hall's seminal two-volume work Youth, based on his survey research, appeared in 1904.

James Sully published an Introduction to Psychology from the Point of view of Educational Theory (1884), William James — Conversations with Teachers about Psychology (1890), and Edouard Clapared — Child Psychology and Experimental Pedagogy (1905). The first manual of educational psychology was published by Thorndike in 1903. In the 1910s, at least five textbooks appeared, and in the 1920s, about ten more. Heinrich Buchholz founded the first journal of educational psychology in 1910. The final version of the Binet scale appeared in 1911.

The following sections of psychology are most important for parenting psychology: child growth and development, learning, mental health, group processes, and individual differences.

Growth and development of the child. It has long been known that the learning process should be carried out in accordance with the age, level of maturation and development of students. In accordance with the principle of repetition, which was followed by the followers of the German educator and philosopher Johann Herbart (1776-1841), the development of each child repeats the historical development of humanity. This approach was unexpectedly supported by the theory of "moving from simple to complex", which worked quite well when it came to the fact that teepees need to be learned before building houses, but when teaching a child their native language, its correctness was no longer so obvious, since it is hardly worth teaching children who can speak letters and syllables, not whole words. The idea that a child is a small adult, not a developing organism, led to the revolutionary changes that Jean Jacques Rousseau proclaimed in his Emile (1762). This was followed by the insightful observations of the great pedagogues Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852).

The description of the child's behavior in different age periods based on physiological studies, the use of questionnaires and observations, gradually became more accurate. Expertly organized surveys of children, conducted by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, revealed data that is essential for understanding the process of developing a child's thinking. All this had not only theoretical significance, but also brought practical benefits for teachers and parents. Among the best-known works on child development are those of Arnold Gesell of Yale University, Harold Jones and Mary Jones of the University of California, and Willard Olson and his collaborators at the University of Michigan.

These studies showed that adults ' expectations of children's abilities at different age stages are often inflated, and the resulting rating system is meaningless and possibly even harmful. It makes no sense to teach children what they are not yet physiologically ready for — independent choice of a student is an important (though not decisive) factor in the formation of the curriculum; in addition, the principle of gradualism is very important, i.e. the idea that children should be given tasks in accordance with their level of development.

Learning. From the point of view of educational psychology, the task of education is much broader than the simple transfer of cultural heritage from generation to generation. Education helps people learn how to respond correctly, or at least appropriately, to a wide range of situations, regardless of whether these responses use motor skills, words and sentences, or unspoken thoughts and ideas.

Believing that learning will be more effective if the teacher gets acquainted with its mechanisms, those who are engaged in educational psychology constantly analyze research materials on learning problems, as well as conduct their own research. Drawing on the work of English associative philosophers, Thorndike developed the concept of associative shift and showed how the principles of adjacency, repetition, and reward apply to the study of behavior.

The Russian Physiologist I. P. Pavlov (1849-1936) showed that the principle of association by adjacency is even more fundamental if it is applied to the study of such an elementary physiological reaction as the salivary reflex. In his experiments, dogs salivated at the bell after the bell was combined with the serving of meat; Pavlov called this learning "conditioning", and the new response — "conditioned reflex". The term "reinforcement" was used to describe the reward, i.e. meat, which has become very popular among psychologists and has since been used in many studies. The term was popularized by John Watson (1878-1958), a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University.

B. F. Skinner, who worked at Harvard, used the same principles to teach pigeons to hit a certain point on the wall with their beak. Skinner turned this into a habit through so-called "reinforcement modes", i.e. various systems of alternating reinforcement with non-reinforcement; some modes were more effective than others. At the same time, Skinner showed the need for direct reinforcement, and applied this principle in the training machines he created. Moreover, reinforcement is not necessarily something to eat; in the process of learning, it can be anything that would allow the student to say or simply feel: "this is right." Thorndike referred to this phenomenon as a confirmation reaction or a "yes" ("ok") reaction. In learning machines, the student is shown the correct answer to each question for comparison with his own answer, which is different from the usual situation in the classroom, where the student's answers are not always adequately supported (they are rarely called to the blackboard, and the notebooks are returned after a long time).

The principle of reinforcement is effective as a way of consistently approaching desirable social behavior and in this context is called "behavior management". Moreover, the procedure varies from a reward for the desired reaction to a reward after a certain period of time, if there are no undesirable actions. Reinforcements can range from sweets to a simple plus sign near your last name on the chalkboard.

Since the 1920s, the processes of perception have been thoroughly studied by gestalt psychologists. (Gestalt, German. "shape", "shape", "ordering", "configuration"). Gestalt psychology argued that the world is perceived by the subject not as a set of individual elements (atomistic, or molecular point of view), but rather as integral structures, images, and figures that stand out against an amorphous background (molar point of view). The observer reacts to things that he sees or hears, and these things are determined by their structure or shape. The probability of perception of objects with clear borders is higher than the probability of perception of structure less and shapeless fragments. This statement should probably be supplemented by data from the phenomenological approach, according to which what people hear or see depends on their nature and what they are used to or expect. From the point of view of the general psychology of education, this is very important, because in the confusion of stimuli surrounding the student, the teacher must indicate to him those things and phenomena to which he should respond, and also teach him to identify signs that are at first glance similar, but differ in some significant indicators, whether they are algebraic plus signs and "minus", musical "keys" designations, changes in the color of chemical solutions, or signs that distinguish a kitten from a rat.

Thus, the student's reactions are directed by the teacher and, in addition, he himself controls the situation, comparing his results with the reference level. In this process, the student gradually improves his activity, the individual parts of which are performed independently of each other, but are perceived and improved as parts of a single whole. Instead of studying individual parts and then connecting them together (the integration method), the student may prefer a different approach — to immediately understand the essence of the whole and develop the individual parts accordingly (the individuation or differentiation method).

In educational psychology, the process of thinking, which is activated when the skills acquired in the process of learning are not adequate to the situation, includes knowledge of relevant facts or data and their restructuring into new configurations. First of all, you need to know the facts. However, it is equally important to learn how to organize facts. Learning can be ineffective because unrelated facts are quickly forgotten, as Ebbinghaus showed in his time and was confirmed by many subsequent experiments. Forgetting initially goes very fast, then it slows down, and a small remainder of knowledge continues to be stored in memory for some time. The presence of motivation, repetition, training, and the influence of significant interpersonal relationships can all contribute to preserving the material in the student's memory, but there is always the possibility that the previously acquired knowledge will be forgotten by the time it is needed.

Another reason for questioning the value of memorization is that it doesn't make sense in terms of problem solving. For example, textbooks that were previously used to teach mathematics in secondary schools began with definitions that took up several pages. The authors of these textbooks apparently believed that it was necessary to determine the meaning of terms in advance before they were actually used. However, concepts are usually acquired gradually in the process of dealing with the corresponding objects and phenomena. Although some knowledge of theory is necessary at the beginning of the learning process, further knowledge can be gained in the process of solving problems.

In the psychology of education, the problem is considered as a barrier between the subject and the goal to which his activity is directed. To solve the problem, it is necessary to restructure its conditions, and sometimes introduce new parameters that were no previously considered. Anything can be used to solve the problem. In one of the experiments on monkeys described by gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Koehler, a chimpanzee placed boxes on top of each other to get a banana from a branch, and while in the cage, he used a bamboo stick to get a banana lying outside. The sudden restructuring of the situation and its components that are necessary to solve the problem is called "insight" or "cognitive reorganization".

When teaching a number of school subjects, teachers try to use the process of cognitive reorganization, and important factors are students ' knowledge of the facts and relationships between them in this discipline, the level of maturity of the student, as well as the availability of ways to solve standard problems of various types.

Creative psychology is a branch of psychology that studies the process of scientific discoveries, inventions, and the creation of works of art.

The term "creativity" indicates both the activity of the individual and the values created by him, which from the facts of his personal fate become the facts of culture.

The basis in the psychology of creativity is the relationship between the product of creativity and its process. The product belongs to the culture; the process belongs to the individual.

Because of this, there is a basic conflict between the psychology of creativity — artistic, technical, scientific: the relationship between the study of the creative personality, its spiritual potential, inner world and behavior with the objective existence of culture. The imprinting of the human mental organization in the forms of this being is heterogeneous. Accordingly, the ability to decipher the uniqueness of this organization from them is evaluated differently. The fruits of scientific and technical creativity are one thing, but the fruits of artistic creativity are another. When referring to products of artistic creation, it is assumed that psychological information can be extracted from their very fabric. The personal principle here shines through everywhere. The " signs " of art themselves convey a message about the movements of the human heart, recreated by the artist, and about his deeply personal attitude to them.

In the psychology of creativity, a product of creativity is a " text " that can be psychologically meaningful only if it goes beyond its limits to the" non-textual" life of the author. The level of cognition of the mechanisms and processes of creativity depends on the general explanatory schemes and research programs of psychology.

The methodological basis of creative psychology is the principle of historicism. A special section of the psychology of creativity is formed by studying the creative activity of children.

The specific problems of creative psychology include the study of the role of imagination, thinking, intuition, inspiration, suprasituative activity, individual psychological characteristics that manifest themselves in the process of creativity (abilities, talent, genius, etc.), the influences exerted on the individual by its entry into the creative team, factors that can stimulate creative activity (group discussion, brainstorming, etc.). attack, certain psychopharmacological agents, etc.).

Management psychology is an interdisciplinary field in psychology that is organically connected with labor psychology, social psychology, labor sociology, and management theory.

The most general definition of the subject of Management psychology is an indication of the psychological patterns of managerial activity.

At the same time, the recognition of the provision on the subject-subject nature of management activities, as well as the fact that its subject is both individuals and groups that include various categories of members of the organization (persons with authority, management specialists, performers), makes it obvious that such an understanding of the subject of management psychology is unjustified broad and intersecting with the subject of labor psychology and engineering psychology.

The most complete differentiation of the subject of management psychology. The difference from other psychological disciplines is achieved by pointing out the study of psychological patterns of activity of persons with authority and implementing the main management functions, as well as the phenomenology associated with the implementation of management in complex open systems. Such management psychology phenomena include:

·        collective subject of management activity,

·        management interaction,

·        management styles,

·        manager's management concept,

·        algorithms for implementing the main management functions and their underlying information processing cycles (management decisions),

·        the process of formation of management teams.

A special place among them is occupied by the personality of the manager and the composition of his professionally important qualities. At the present stage of development, management psychology has not yet overcome its methodological eclecticism associated with its multidisciplinary origin.

Methods of management psychology are:

a) observation,

b) survey,

c) document analysis,

d) natural experiment,

e) the labor method (introspection of professionals).

Practical implementation of developments in the field of management psychology is carried out in the form of creating diagnostic tools, developing active methods of training managers, managerial consulting, in particular, on professional development issues, creating a reserve for promotion to senior positions, etc.