INTRODUCTION

Psychology, the scientific study of behavior and the mind. This definition contains three
elements. The first is that psychology is a scientific enterprise that obtains knowledge
through systematic and objective methods of observation and experimentation. Second is
that psychologists study behavior, which refers to any action or reaction that can be
measured or observed—such as the blink of an eye, an increase in heart rate, or the
unruly violence that often erupts in a mob. Third is that psychologists study the mind,
which refers to both conscious and unconscious mental states. These states cannot
actually be seen, only inferred from observable behavior.

Many people think of psychologists as individuals who dispense advice, analyze

personality, and help those who are troubled or mentally ill. But psychology is far more
than the treatment of personal problems. Psychologists strive to understand the mysteries
of human nature—why people think, feel, and act as they do. Some psychologists also
study animal behavior, using their findings to determine laws of behavior that apply to all
organisms and to formulate theories about how humans behave and think.

With its broad scope, psychology investigates an enormous range of phenomena: learning
and memory, sensation and perception, motivation and emotion, thinking and language,
personality and social behavior, intelligence, infancy and child development, mental
illness, and much more. Furthermore, psychologists examine these topics from a variety
of complementary perspectives. Some conduct detailed biological studies of the brain,
others explore how we process information; others analyze the role of evolution, and still
others study the influence of culture and society.

Psychologists seek to answer a wide range of important questions about human nature:
Are individuals genetically predisposed at birth to develop certain traits or abilities? How
accurate are people at remembering faces, places, or conversations from the past? What
motivates us to seek out friends and sexual partners? Why do so many people become
depressed and behave in ways that seem self-destructive? Do intelligence test scores
predict success in school, or later in a career? What causes prejudice, and why is it so
widespread? Can the mind be used to heal the body? Discoveries from psychology can
help people understand themselves, relate better to others, and solve the problems that
confront them.

The term psychology comes from two Greek words: psyche, which means “soul,” and
logos, 'the study of.' These root words were first combined in the 16th century, at a time
when the human soul, spirit, or mind was seen as distinct from the body.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights

reserved.

PSYCHOLOGY AND OTHER SCIENCES

Psychology overlaps with other sciences that investigate behavior and mental processes.
Certain parts of the field share much with the biological sciences, especially physiology,
the biological study of the functions of living organisms and their parts. Like
physiologists, many psychologists study the inner workings of the body from a biological
perspective. However, psychologists usually focus on the activity of the brain and
nervous system.

The social sciences of sociology and anthropology, which study human societies and
cultures, also intersect with psychology. For example, both psychology and sociology
explore how people behave when they are in groups. However, psychologists try to
understand behavior from the vantage point of the individual, whereas sociologists focus
on how behavior is shaped by social forces and social institutions. Anthropologists
investigate behavior as well, paying particular attention to the similarities and differences
between human cultures around the world.

Psychology is closely connected with psychiatry, which is the branch of medicine

specializing in mental illnesses. The study of mental illness is one of the largest areas of
research in psychology. Psychiatrists and psychologists differ in their training. A person
seeking to become a psychiatrist first obtains a medical degree and then engages in
further formal medical education in psychiatry. Most psychologists have a doctoral
graduate degree in psychology.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights

reserved.

The Moral Development of Children

By William Damon

With unsettling regularity, news reports tell us of children wreaking havoc on their
schools and communities: attacking teachers and classmates, murdering parents,
persecuting others out of viciousness, avarice or spite. We hear about feral gangs of
children running drugs or numbers, about teenage date rape, about youthful vandalism,
about epidemics of cheating even in academically elite schools. Not long ago a middle-
class gang of youths terrorized an affluent California suburb through menacing threats
and extortion, proudly awarding themselves points for each antisocial act. Such stories
make Lord of the Flies seem eerily prophetic.
What many people forget in the face of this grim news is that most children most of the
time do follow the rules of their society, act fairly, treat friends kindly, tell the truth and
respect their elders. Many youngsters do even more. A large portion of young Americans
volunteer in community service—according to one survey, between 22 and 45 percent,
depending on the location. Young people have also been leaders in social causes. Harvard
University psychiatrist Robert Coles has written about children such as Ruby, an African-
American girl who broke the color barrier in her school during the 1960s. Ruby's daily
walk into the all-white school demonstrated a brave sense of moral purpose. When
taunted by classmates, Ruby prayed for their redemption rather than cursing them. 'Ruby,'
Coles observed, 'had a will and used it to make an ethical choice; she demonstrated moral
stamina; she possessed honor, courage.'
All children are born with a running start on the path to moral development. A number of
inborn responses predispose them to act in ethical ways. For example, empathy—the
capacity to experience another person's pleasure or pain vicariously—is part of our native
endowment as humans. Newborns cry when they hear others cry and show signs of
pleasure at happy sounds such as cooing and laughter. By the second year of life, children
commonly console peers or parents in distress.
Sometimes, of course, they do not quite know what comfort to provide. Psychologist
Martin L. Hoffman of New York University once saw a toddler offering his mother his
security blanket when he perceived she was upset. Although the emotional disposition to
help is present, the means of helping others effectively must be learned and refined
through social experience. Moreover, in many people the capacity for empathy stagnates
or even diminishes. People can act cruelly to those they refuse to empathize with. A New
York police officer once asked a teenage thug how he could have crippled an 83-year-old
woman during a mugging. The boy replied, 'What do I care? I'm not her.'
A scientific account of moral growth must explain both the good and the bad. Why do
most children act in reasonably—sometimes exceptionally—moral ways, even when it
flies in the face of their immediate self-interest? Why do some children depart from
accepted standards, often to the great harm of themselves and others? How does a child
acquire mores and develop a lifelong commitment to moral behavior, or not?
Psychologists do not have definitive answers to these questions, and often their studies
seem merely to confirm parents' observations and intuition. But parents, like all people,
can be led astray by subjective biases, incomplete information and media sensationalism.
They may blame a relatively trivial event—say, a music concert—for a deep-seated
problem such as drug dependency. They may incorrectly attribute their own problems to
a strict upbringing and then try to compensate by raising their children in an overly
permissive way. In such a hotly contested area as children's moral values, a systematic,
scientific approach is the only way to avoid wild swings of emotional reaction that end up
repeating the same mistakes.

The Genealogy of Morals

The study of moral development has become a lively growth industry within the social
sciences. Journals are full of new findings and competing models. Some theories focus on
natural biological forces; others stress social influence and experience; still others, the
judgment that results from children's intellectual development. Although each theory has
a different emphasis, all recognize that no single cause can account for either moral or
immoral behavior. Watching violent videos or playing shoot-'em-up computer games
may push some children over the edge and leave others unaffected. Conventional wisdom
dwells on lone silver bullets, but scientific understanding must be built on an appreciation
of the complexity and variety of children's lives.
Biologically oriented, or 'nativist,' theories maintain that human morality springs from
emotional dispositions that are hardwired into our species. Hoffman, Colwyn Trevarthen
of the University of Edinburgh and Nancy Eisenberg of Arizona State University have
established that babies can feel empathy as soon as they recognize the existence of others
—sometimes in the first week after birth. Other moral emotions that make an early
appearance include shame, guilt and indignation. As Harvard child psychologist Jerome
S. Kagan has described, young children can be outraged by the violation of social
expectations, such as a breach in the rules of a favorite game or rearranged buttons on a
piece of familiar clothing.
Nearly everybody, in every culture, inherits these dispositions. Mary D. Ainsworth of the
University of Virginia reported empathy among Ugandan and American infants; Norma
Feshbach of the University of California at Los Angeles conducted a similar comparison
of newborns in Europe, Israel and the U.S.; Millard C. Madsen of U.C.L.A. studied
sharing by preschool children in nine cultures. As far as psychologists know, children
everywhere start life with caring feelings toward those close to them and adverse
reactions to inhumane or unjust behavior. Differences in how these reactions are
triggered and expressed emerge only later, once children have been exposed to the
particular value systems of their cultures.
In contrast, the learning theories concentrate on children's acquisition of behavioral
norms and values through observation, imitation and reward. Research in this tradition
has concluded that moral behavior is context-bound, varying from situation to situation
almost independently of stated beliefs. Landmark studies in the 1920s, still frequently
cited, include Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May's survey of how children reacted when
given the chance to cheat. The children's behavior depended largely on whether they
thought they would be caught. It could be predicted neither from their conduct in
previous situations nor from their knowledge of common moral rules, such as the Ten
Commandments and the Boy Scout's code.
Later reanalyses of Hartshorne and May's data, performed by Roger Burton of the State
University of New York at Buffalo, discovered at least one general trend: younger
children were more likely to cheat than adolescents. Perhaps socialization or mental
growth can restrain dishonest behavior after all. But the effect was not a large one.
The third basic theory of moral development puts the emphasis on intellectual growth,
arguing that virtue and vice are ultimately a matter of conscious choice. The best-known
cognitive theories are those of psychologists Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. Both
described children's early moral beliefs as oriented toward power and authority. For
young children, might makes right, literally. Over time they come to understand that
social rules are made by people and thus can be renegotiated and that reciprocity in
relationships is more fair than unilateral obedience. Kohlberg identified a six-stage
sequence in the maturation of moral judgment. Several thousand studies have used it as a
measure of how advanced a person's moral reasoning is.

Conscience versus Chocolate

Although the main parts of Kohlberg's sequence have been confirmed, notable exceptions
stand out. Few if any people reach the sixth and most advanced stage, in which their
moral view is based purely on abstract principles. As for the early stages in the sequence,
many studies (including ones from my own laboratory) have found that young children
have a far richer sense of positive morality than the model indicates. In other words, they
do not act simply out of fear of punishment. When a playmate hogs a plate of cookies or
refuses to relinquish a swing, the protest 'That's not fair!' is common. At the same time,
young children realize that they have an obligation to share with others—even when their
parents say not to. Preschool children generally believe in an equal distribution of goods
and back up their beliefs with reasons such as empathy ('I want my friend to feel nice'),
reciprocity ('She shares her toys with me') and egalitarianism ('We should all get the
same'). All this they figure out through confrontation with peers at play. Without fairness,
they learn, there will be trouble.
In fact, none of the three traditional theories is sufficient to explain children's moral
growth and behavior. None captures the most essential dimensions of moral life:
character and commitment. Regardless of how children develop their initial system of
values, the key question is: What makes them live up to their ideals or not? This issue is
the focus of recent scientific thinking.
Like adults, children struggle with temptation. To see how this tug of war plays itself out
in the world of small children, my colleagues and I (then at Clark University) devised the
following experiment. We brought groups, each of four children, into our lab, gave them
string and beads, and asked them to make bracelets and necklaces for us. We then
thanked them profusely for their splendid work and rewarded them, as a group, with 10
candy bars. Then the real experiment began: we told each group that it would need to
decide the best way to divide up the reward. We left the room and watched through a
one-way mirror.
Before the experiment, we had interviewed participants about the concept of fairness. We
were curious, of course, to find out whether the prospect of gobbling up real chocolate
would overwhelm their abstract sense of right and wrong. To test this thoroughly, we
gave one unfortunate control group an almost identical conundrum, using cardboard
rectangles rather than real chocolate—a not so subtle way of defusing their self-interest.
We observed groups of four-, six-, eight- and 10-year-old children to see whether the
relationship between situational and hypothetical morality changed with age.
The children's ideals did make a difference but within limits circumscribed by narrow
self-interest. Children given cardboard acted almost three times more generously toward
one another than did children given chocolate. Yet moral beliefs still held some sway. For
example, children who had earlier expressed a belief in merit-based solutions ('The one
who did the best job should get more of the candy') were the ones most likely to advocate
for merit in the real situation. But they did so most avidly when they themselves could
claim to have done more than their peers. Without such a claim, they were easily
persuaded to drop meritocracy for an equal division.
Even so, these children seldom abandoned fairness entirely. They may have switched
from one idea of justice to another—say, from merit to equality—but they did not resort
to egoistic justifications such as 'I should get more because I'm big' or 'Boys like candy
more than girls, and I'm a boy.' Such rationales generally came from children who had
declared no belief in either equality or meritocracy. Older children were more likely to
believe in fairness and to act accordingly, even when such action favored others. This
finding was evidence for the reassuring proposition that ideals can have an increasing
influence on conduct as a child matures.

Do the Right Thing

But this process is not automatic. A person must adopt those beliefs as a central part of
his or her personal identity. When a person moves from saying 'People should be honest'
to 'I want to be honest,' he or she becomes more likely to tell the truth in everyday
interactions. A person's use of moral principles to define the self is called the person's
moral identity. Moral identity determines not merely what the person considers to be the
right course of action but also why he or she would decide: 'I myself must take this
course.' This distinction is crucial to understanding the variety of moral behavior. The
same basic ideals are widely shared by even the youngest members of society; the
difference is the resolve to act on those ideals.
Most children and adults will express the belief that it is wrong to allow others to suffer,
but only a subset of them will conclude that they themselves must do something about,
say, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Those are the ones who are most likely to donate money
or fly to the Balkans to help. Their concerns about human suffering are central to the way
they think about themselves and their life goals, and so they feel a responsibility to take
action, even at great personal cost.
In a study of moral exemplars—people with long, publicly documented histories of
charity and civil-rights work—psychologist Anne Colby of the Carnegie Foundation and
I encountered a high level of integration between self-identity and moral concerns.
'People who define themselves in terms of their moral goals are likely to see moral
problems in everyday events, and they are also likely to see themselves as necessarily
implicated in these problems,' we wrote. Yet the exemplars showed no signs of more
insightful moral reasoning. Their ideals and Kohlberg levels were much the same as
everyone else's.
Conversely, many people are equally aware of moral problems, but to them the issues
seem remote from their own lives and their senses of self. Kosovo and Rwanda sound far
away and insignificant; they are easily put out of mind. Even issues closer to home—say,
a maniacal clique of peers who threaten a classmate—may seem like someone else's
problem. For people who feel this way, inaction does not strike at their self-conception.
Therefore, despite commonplace assumptions to the contrary, their moral knowledge will
not be enough to impel moral action.
The development of a moral identity follows a general pattern. It normally takes shape in
late childhood, when children acquire the capacity to analyze people—including
themselves—in terms of stable character traits. In childhood, self-identifying traits
usually consist of action-related skills and interests ('I'm smart' or 'I love music'). With
age, children start to use moral terms to define themselves. By the onset of puberty, they
typically invoke adjectives such as 'fairminded,' 'generous' and 'honest.'
Some adolescents go so far as to describe themselves primarily in terms of moral goals.
They speak of noble purposes, such as caring for others or improving their communities,
as missions that give meaning to their lives. Working in Camden, N.J., Daniel Hart and
his colleagues at Rutgers University found that a high proportion of so-called care
exemplars—teenagers identified by teachers and peers as highly committed to
volunteering—had self-identities that were based on moral belief systems. Yet they
scored no higher than their peers on the standard psychological tests of moral judgment.
The study is noteworthy because it was conducted in an economically deprived urban
setting among an adolescent population often stereotyped as high risk and criminally
inclined.
At the other end of the moral spectrum, further evidence indicates that moral identity
drives behavior. Social psychologists Hazel Markus of Stanford University and Daphne
Oyserman of the University of Michigan have observed that delinquent youths have
immature senses of self, especially when talking about their future selves (a critical part
of adolescent identity). These troubled teenagers do not imagine themselves as doctors,
husbands, voting citizens, church members—any social role that embodies a positive
value commitment.
How does a young person acquire, or not acquire, a moral identity? It is an incremental
process, occurring gradually in thousands of small ways: feedback from others;
observations of actions by others that either inspire or appall; reflections on one's own
experience; cultural influences such as family, school, religious institutions and the mass
media. The relative importance of these factors varies from child to child.

Teach Your Children Well

For most children, parents are the original source of moral guidance. Psychologists such
as Diana Baumrind of the University of California at Berkeley have shown that
'authoritative' parenting facilitates children's moral growth more surely than either
'permissive' or 'authoritarian' parenting. The authoritative mode establishes consistent
family rules and firm limits but also encourages open discussion and clear
communication to explain and, when justified, revise the rules. In contrast, the permissive
mode avoids rules entirely; the authoritarian mode irregularly enforces rules at the
parent's whim—the 'because I said so' approach.
Although permissive and authoritarian parenting seem like opposites, they actually tend
to produce similar patterns of poor self-control and low social responsibility in children.
Neither mode presents children with the realistic expectations and structured guidance
that challenge them to expand their moral horizons. Both can foster habits—such as
feeling that mores come from the outside—that could inhibit the development of a moral
identity. In this way, moral or immoral conduct during adulthood often has roots in
childhood experience.
As children grow, they are increasingly exposed to influences beyond the family. In most
families, however, the parent-child relationship remains primary as long as the child lives
at home. A parent's comment on a raunchy music lyric or a blood-drenched video usually
will stick with a child long after the media experience has faded. In fact, if salacious or
violent media programming opens the door to responsible parental feedback, the benefits
can far outweigh the harm.
One of the most influential things parents can do is to encourage the right kinds of peer
relations. Interactions with peers can spur moral growth by showing children the conflict
between their preconceptions and social reality. During the debates about dividing the
chocolate, some of our subjects seemed to pick up new—and more informed—ideas
about justice. In a follow-up study, we confirmed that the peer debate had heightened
their awareness of the rights of others. Children who participated actively in the debate,
both expressing their opinions and listening to the viewpoints of others, were especially
likely to benefit.
In adolescence, peer interactions are crucial in forging a self-identity. To be sure, this
process often plays out in cliquish social behavior: as a means of defining and shoring up
the sense of self, kids will seek out like-minded peers and spurn others who seem foreign.
But when kept within reasonable bounds, the in-group clustering generally evolves into a
more mature friendship pattern. What can parents do in the meantime to fortify a teenager
who is bearing the brunt of isolation or persecution? The most important message they
can give is that cruel behavior reveals something about the perpetrator rather than about
the victim. If this advice helps the youngster resist taking the treatment personally, the
period of persecution will pass without leaving any psychological scars.
Some psychologists, taking a sociological approach, are examining community-level
variables, such as whether various moral influences—parents, teachers, mass media and
so on—are consistent with one another. In a study of 311 adolescents from 10 American
towns and cities, Francis A. J. Ianni of the Columbia University Teachers College noticed
high degrees of altruistic behavior and low degrees of antisocial behavior among
youngsters from communities where there was consensus in expectations for young
people.
Everyone in these places agreed that honesty, for instance, is a fundamental value.
Teachers did not tolerate cheating on exams, parents did not let their children lie and get
away with it, sports coaches did not encourage teams to bend the rules for the sake of a
win, and people of all ages expected openness from their friends. But many communities
were divided along such lines. Coaches espoused winning above all else, and parents
protested when teachers reprimanded their children for cheating or shoddy schoolwork.
Under such circumstances, children learned not to take moral messages seriously.
Ianni named the set of shared standards in harmonious communities a 'youth charter.'
Ethnicity, cultural diversity, socioeconomic status, geographic location and population
size had nothing to do with whether a town offered its young people a steady moral
compass. The notion of a youth charter is being explored in social interventions that
foster communication among children, parents, teachers and other influential adults.
Meanwhile other researchers have sought to understand whether the specific values
depend on cultural, gender or generational background.
Unfortunately, the concepts embodied in youth charters seem ever rarer in American
society. Even when adults spot trouble, they may fail to step in. Parents are busy and
often out of touch with the peer life of their children; they give kids more autonomy than
ever before, and kids expect it—indeed, demand it. Teachers, for their part, feel that a
child's nonacademic life is none of their business and that they could be censured, even
sued, if they intervened in a student's personal or moral problem. And neighbors feel the
same way: that they have no business interfering with another family's business, even if
they see a child headed for trouble.
Everything that psychologists know from the study of children's moral development
indicates that moral identity—the key source of moral commitment throughout life—is
fostered by multiple social influences that guide a child in the same general direction.
Children must hear the message enough for it to stick. The challenge for pluralistic
societies will be to find enough common ground to communicate the shared standards
that the young need.
Source: Reprinted with permission. Copyright © August 1999 by Scientific American,
Inc. All rights reserved.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.

In addition to the contributions of psychology as a whole, two fields within psychology

focus exclusively on education: educational psychology and school psychology.
Educational psychologists seek to understand and improve the teaching and learning
process within the classroom and other educational settings. Educational psychologists
study topics such as intelligence and ability testing, student motivation, discipline and
classroom management, curriculum plans, and grading. They also test general theories
about how students learn most effectively. School psychologists work in elementary and
secondary school systems administering tests, making placement recommendations, and
counseling children with academic or emotional problems.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights

reserved.

In addition to the contributions of psychology as a whole, two fields within psychology

focus exclusively on education: educational psychology and school psychology.
Educational psychologists seek to understand and improve the teaching and learning
process within the classroom and other educational settings. Educational psychologists
study topics such as intelligence and ability testing, student motivation, discipline and
classroom management, curriculum plans, and grading. They also test general theories
about how students learn most effectively. School psychologists work in elementary and
secondary school systems administering tests, making placement recommendations, and
counseling children with academic or emotional problems.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights

reserved.

In this essay, British education theorist Peter Newsam describes two contrasting
approaches to education. The traditional approach assumes there is a predetermined body
of knowledge that the teacher should pass on to the student. This approach uses testing
and competition to evaluate and motivate students. In the progressive approach, the child,
rather than a set body of knowledge, is the frame of reference. The teacher’s role is to be
conscious of the development stage and the capacity of each child. The progressive
method stresses cooperation rather than competition. Newsam suggests that an effective
teaching system can incorporate elements of each approach.

Teaching and Learning

By Peter Newsam
The relationship between teaching and learning, what and how teachers teach, and how
and what learners learn has long been a subject of controversy. The two, sometimes
extreme, positions adopted by those who engage in it can be loosely described as, on the
one hand, “traditional” and, on the other, “progressive.”
The traditional position starts from the assumption, taken to be so obvious as not to be
open to question, that the purpose of teaching is to ensure that those taught acquire a
prescribed body of knowledge and set of values. Both knowledge and values are taken to
reflect a society’s selection of what it most wants to transmit to its future citizens and
requires its future workforce to be able to do.
An important characteristic of this traditional view is that it seeks to convey what is
already known and, at some level, approved. The relationship between teacher and
learner is determined thereby. The learner is seen as the person who does not yet have the
required knowledge or values and the teacher as the person who has both and whose
function it is to convey them to the learner.
From the nature of this relationship, a number of things follow: the systematic
transmission of knowledge and values from teacher to learner needs to proceed smoothly.
That requires well-behaved learners and a disciplined environment, if necessary
externally imposed with sanctions for failures in compliance. Teaching and learning also
benefit from carefully designed syllabuses and prescribed curriculum content.
Furthermore, as what has to be learned can be set out in full, stage by stage, from the start
of the educational process to its conclusion, it follows that what is taught can be regularly
tested and that each stage of teaching and learning can best be seen as a preparation for
the next. It also follows that, as individual learners learn at different speeds and are
capable of reaching different levels of achievement, it seems sensible to arrange learners
in groups of similar abilities, either at different schools or in graduated classes within
schools. Finally, so far as human motivation is concerned, competition is seen to be the
predominant way to encourage learners or institutions to strive to improve their
performance in relation to that of others.
The opposed view, broadly described as “progressive” or “child-centered,” starts from
the learner rather than from any predetermined body of knowledge. On this view, the
function of the teacher, from parent in the earliest years right through the years of school
attendance, is to be aware of each child’s capacity and stage of development. The primary
importance of children’s learning, which in turn is taken to depend on that stage of
development, requires each of those stages to be seen as important in its own right rather
than as a preparation for some later stage. An eight-year-old child, for example, is seen as
an eight year old to be developed to his or her full potential as an eight year old, rather
than as a future nine or fifteen year old. The curriculum itself tends to be seen, in the
words of the Report of the Consultative Committee on the Primary School as open-ended
and inquiry-based: “the curriculum is to be thought of in terms of activity and experience
rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored.”
So far as values are concerned, the progressive approach tends to see attempts to teach or
improve these directly as less effective than creating schools which exemplify values of
greatest relevance to the young. Hence the importance placed on the way individuals,
adults and learners alike, are encouraged to behave towards each other. A disciplined
environment, rather than being externally imposed, is a direct consequence of that
process. Social values, cooperation rather than competition and equal value given to the
efforts of the least as well as the most able, are emphasized. Finally, as a point of
principle, it is assumed all can succeed at some level in some aspects of learning. As one
19th-century educator insisted: “All can walk part of the way with genius.” Sharply
differentiated forms of education, with children attending schools or classes confined to
those with particular levels of aptitude, however assessed, are thought to conflict with
this principle. By inducing a sense of failure in children allocated to what are seen, by
others and themselves, as schools or classes with lower standards than others, general
levels of achievement are thought to be depressed and an unmotivated and under-
achieving group of children unnecessarily created.
The opposed concepts implicit in “traditional” and “progressive” attitudes to teaching and
learning reflect approaches regarded by those holding one or other of them as self-
evident: that it must be right to start from what needs to be taught or, conversely, that it
must be right to start from the learner whose success in learning it is the purpose of
teaching to ensure.
The virtual impossibility of reconciling these two diverse approaches, at least in their
extreme forms, has led to each being caricatured, often in metaphorical terms. Traditional
education’s perception of children, in an extreme form, was described by Charles
Dickens in Hard Times as seeing them as: “little vessels arranged in order, ready to have
imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.” In short, like
a kettle that has to be filled from a tap, the traditional learner is taken to be a passive
recipient of whatever is being taught. Further, because the traditional approach to
education requires a degree of memorization, the ability to recall with precision what has
been taught in the terms in which it has to be reproduced by the learner, this feature is
disparagingly described as “learning by rote.” The implication is that the learner’s mind
has not been required to be engaged in the process. Finally, the assumption that, to the
traditionalist, knowledge is something that already exists, causes this approach to be seen
as backward-looking at a time when new knowledge is being created and reshaped at a
bewildering rate.
Criticisms of progressive education, particularly in its extreme forms, have concentrated
on the folly, as this is perceived, of allowing children to decide when and how they are to
learn anything. Lack of externally imposed discipline has led to some schools where, as
one inspector of schools described it, “it is like a wet play-time all day.” The emphasis on
growth and development, with analogies to the way plants move naturally through their
lives without constantly being told what to become, has been particularly criticized. The
simple notion of growth carries with it no implication as to the direction that growth is
taking. Growth, progressives are thought to ignore, may as easily be in an unwholesome
direction as a healthy one. This leads to values being seen to be relative, with no one set
of values inherently to be preferred to any others. Yet what ought to be, values of any
kind, cannot be derived from what is; and it is a naturalistic fallacy to suppose otherwise.
Finally, because the teacher is not seen as at the center of the educational process, he or
she is reduced to becoming a “facilitator” of children’s learning; in extreme cases
unprepared even to answer simple questions or directly to teach anything at all, on the
assumption that the only things a learner really learns are those things which he or she
has “discovered for himself.”
Between the two extreme positions, reconciliation has proved difficult. Historically, the
traditional approach has been dominant and continues to be held particularly firmly by
those who themselves were able, well-motivated learners and as such required little more
of their teachers than specific instruction. Progressive approaches have tended to be
favored by teachers or theoreticians whose concern has been with the education of all
children, including the able and the well-motivated but with particular attention to the
needs of those with little interest in or apparent aptitude for learning and little confidence
in its relevance to their own lives.
In practice, neither of the two extreme approaches to teaching and learning has proved
generally satisfactory. In its starkest form, traditional education has often served able
pupils well but has been less successful with others. On the other hand, progressive
education has tended to work well enough in the early years of schooling, in the hands of
able and committed teachers, but has had less success when attempted in other
circumstances.
The need to develop systems which incorporate the best of traditional and progressive
approaches to teaching and learning has long been evident. Fortunately, what good
schools and good teachers actually do has suggested ways forward. Increasingly, the
approach adopted places the teacher in authority, as traditionally has been the position,
but the absolute necessity of engaging learners in their own learning, as progressive
educators have argued, is seen as equally important. Teaching, on this view, requires
skillful questioning of pupils by the teacher, rather than undue reliance on direct
instruction. The purpose of that questioning is to encourage the minds of the learners to
understand, to arrange, and to act on the material with which they are required to engage.
In this sense, learning is active; indeed it is interactive, with the teacher responsible for
ensuring the direction that this learning takes but with the learner consistently being
challenged to shape it to his or her needs. Education of this kind has increasingly become
a feature of effective schools and school systems worldwide. In the process, the long-
standing conflict between traditional and progressive approaches to teaching and
learning, with the time-consuming controversies to which this gives rise, has a real
prospect of being resolved.
About the author: Sir Peter Newsam is an educationalist and former director of the
Institute of Education, University of London.

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II
DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIELD
.

The philosophic, rather than the scientific, method was the main mode for inquiry about
learning and the mind until 1879, when the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt
founded a laboratory in Leipzig devoted to the scientific study of psychology. Another
German psychologist of the time, Hermann Ebbinghaus, developed techniques for the
experimental study of memory and forgetting. Before Ebbinghaus, these higher mental
processes had never been scientifically studied; the importance of this work for the
practical world of schooling was immediately recognized.
At the same time, the American philosopher and psychologist William James started a
laboratory at Harvard University for experimental psychology. James, influenced by
Charles Darwin, was interested in how behavior adapted in different environments. This
functional approach to behavioral research led James to study practical areas of human
endeavor, such as education. In 1899 he published Talks to Teachers, in which he
discussed the relation between psychology and teaching.

James's student Edward Lee Thorndike is usually considered the first educational
psychologist. In his book Educational Psychology (1903), Thorndike claimed to report
only scientific and quantifiable research. In 1913-14 he published three volumes of
material containing reports of virtually all the scientific study in psychology that had
relevance to education. Thorndike made major contributions to the study of intelligence
and ability testing, mathematics and reading instruction, and the way learning transfers
from one situation to another. In addition, he developed an important theory of learning
that describes how stimuli and responses are connected.

The field of educational psychology flourished within the progressive movement in

education that had begun in the early 20th century. The Great Depression, however, led
psychologists to adopt a more modest position about their potential for improving
education. From the early 1930s until the mid-1940s, empirical research in educational
psychology was conducted by only a few people. Four things changed the outlook of the
field again: World War II, the postwar baby boom, the curricula reform movement, and
the growing concern for disadvantaged children.

During World War II, psychologists in the armed forces were required to solve practical
educational problems. They learned to predict, for instance, who would make a good pilot
or radio repairman; they learned to teach skills such as aircraft gunnery and cooking
quickly. When the war ended, many of these psychologists turned their attention to
testing and instruction in education. Concurrently, as schools were filled by the postwar
baby boom, educational psychologists were needed to design and evaluate instructional
materials, training programs, and tests. By the late 1950s, when the United States was
carrying on a technological race with the Soviet Union, efforts to update the American
school curriculum were increased. Educational psychologists worked with leaders in
science and mathematics to develop new curricula and new teacher-education programs.
Later, millions of dollars of federal money were allocated to improve the academic
performance of disadvantaged students. Educational psychologists were deeply involved
in the design and evaluation of programs to accomplish this goal.

These societal forces led to rapid growth in the field after 1960. Today, more than 3000
educational psychologists belong to the American Psychological Association, and almost
5500 members of the American Educational Research Association are concerned with
issues in the field. Most universities now require preservice teachers to take at least one
course in educational psychology. Empirical research is constantly conducted at the
university level and reported in dozens of journals.

III THEORIES IN EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

 .

A. Learning Theory

Learning Aggression Through Observation

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Different theories of learning help educational psychologists understand, predict, and

control human behavior. For example, educational psychologists have worked out
mathematical models of learning that predict the probability of a person's making a
correct response; these mathematical theories are used to design computerized instruction
in reading, mathematics, and second-language learning. To understand a child's
emotional aversion to school, the respondent (or classical) conditioning theory originated
by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov may be used. Pavlov's theory describes how
stimuli that occur together may come to evoke similar responses. To inquire about the
origins of a child's disruptive classroom behavior, the operant (or instrumental)
conditioning theory of Thorndike and the American psychologist B. F. Skinner may be
applicable. This theory describes how rewards shape and maintain behavior. School
violence and vandalism may be partially understood through the social-learning theory of
the Canadian-American psychologist Albert Bandura, which describes the conditions
under which people learn to imitate models. Information-processing theory is used to
understand how people solve problems by analogy and metaphor.

B.
Motivation

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Motivation
Attribution theory describes the role of motivation in a person's success or failure in
school situations. Success on a test, for instance, could be attributed to luck or hard work;
the theory predicts the behavior of students depending on their responses

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Development

The theory of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget that intellectual ability is qualitatively
different at different ages and that children need interaction with the environment to gain
intellectual competency has influenced all of education and psychology. This new
concept of intelligence affected the design of learning environments for young children
and the development of mathematics and science programs.

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d.

Theory in Teaching

The scientific study of teaching is a relatively new development; until the 1950s, little
systematic observation and experimentation took place. The research on teaching has
been consistent in its implications for academic achievement. The variables that
educational psychologists have found to be important in classroom teaching include the
time teachers allocate to instruction, the amount of content they cover, the percent of time
that students are engaged in learning, the congruence between what is taught and what is
tested, and the ability of the teacher to give clear directions, provide feedback, hold
students accountable for their behavior, and create a warm, democratic atmosphere for
learning.

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Instructional Theory

The American educator Robert Gagné developed a hierarchical theory that some types of
learning are prerequisites to other kinds of learning. His research has been fruitfully used
in determining the sequence of instruction.

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APPLICATIONS
In schools, educational psychology has been applied recently to creating a system of
instruction known as mastery learning, which is based on the belief that most students
can achieve high grades if certain procedures are followed: (1) The curriculum is broken
down into logically sequenced units of about two weeks' duration; (2) the students pass a
test at the end of each unit of learning before proceeding to the next unit; (3) alternate
forms of instruction and tests are available so that students can do remedial work if they
fail the first time; and (4) students determine for themselves the amount of time they need
to complete a unit. This form of instruction is usually successful in courses that stress
acquisition of knowledge.

Educational psychologists frequently engage in curriculum research and development.

Instructional plans and test items are designed to match specified objectives. The plans
then are tested and, if necessary, redesigned on the basis of empirical findings. This
method has also been used to design instructional television programs and a wide range
of ancillary curriculum materials.

Techniques of educational psychology are used in teacher-training programs. Principles

of behavior modification are applied to a wide set of teaching problems such as reducing
the noise level of disorderly classrooms or increasing the study time of students who
daydream.

Educational psychologists have devised in-service teacher-training programs to improve

reading and mathematics instruction in accord with the findings of recent empirical
research. These studies demonstrate that research on teaching can be used to train
teachers in ways that will increase student achievement, even in low-achieving
classrooms. See Teacher

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CURRENT TRENDS

Educational psychologists are becoming increasingly interested in how people receive,

interpret, encode, store, and retrieve information. Attempts to understand the cognitive
process have shed light on human problem solving, memory, and creativity. Because of
many new theories about appropriate ways to assess an individual's ability and aptitude,
educational psychologists are also working in the area of test development. The
educational impact of technological advances such as the microcomputer, for instance,
will also be studied and evaluated during the next few decades. Recent laws in the U.S.
that require handicapped, emotionally disturbed, and learning-disabled children to be
taught whenever possible in regular classrooms have extended the area of empirical
study, as new problems occasioned by these changes require new solutions from
educational psychologists.

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During the first decades of psychology, two main schools of thought dominated the field:
structuralism and functionalism. Structuralism was a system of psychology developed by
Edward Bradford Titchener, an American psychologist who studied under Wilhelm
Wundt. Structuralists believed that the task of psychology is to identify the basic
elements of consciousness in much the same way that physicists break down the basic
particles of matter. For example, Titchener identified four elements in the sensation of
taste: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. The main method of investigation in structuralism was
introspection. The influence of structuralism in psychology faded after Titchener’s death
in 1927.

In contradiction to the structuralist movement, William James promoted a school of

thought known as functionalism, the belief that the real task of psychology is to
investigate the function, or purpose, of consciousness rather than its structure. James was
highly influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary theory that all characteristics of a species
must serve some adaptive purpose. Functionalism enjoyed widespread appeal in the
United States. Its three main leaders were James Rowland Angell, a student of James;
John Dewey, who was also one of the foremost American philosophers and educators;
and Harvey A. Carr, a psychologist at the University of Chicago.

In their efforts to understand human behavioral processes, the functional psychologists

developed the technique of longitudinal research, which consists of interviewing, testing,
and observing one person over a long period of time. Such a system permits the
psychologist to observe and record the person’s development and how he or she reacts to
different circumstances. See Functionalism.

F.
Freud and Psychoanalysis

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Functionalism (psychology), also functional psychology, school of psychological

thinking that stressed the study of the mind as a functioning and useful part of the
organism. The functionalist attitude was a natural outcome of the widespread interest in
Darwinism and in the doctrine of the “survival of the fittest.” Functionalism emphasized
such techniques as human intelligence tests and controlled experiments designed to test
the ability of animals to learn and solve problems. This type of investigation represented
a clear break with the introspective methods favored by other 19th-century psychologists.
William James was one of the earliest proponents of the functionalist approach, and John
Dewey was the first to teach the doctrine formally. From about 1890 to 1910
functionalism was the most important movement in psychology. In many respects it was
the precursor of behaviorism. Functionalism is no longer regarded as a separate
psychological doctrine, but its viewpoint has had a lasting influence on such fields of
modern applied psychology as intelligence and aptitude testing.
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Behaviorism, a movement in psychology that advocates the use of strict experimental

procedures to study observable behavior (or responses) in relation to the environment (or
stimuli). The behavioristic view of psychology has its roots in the writings of the British
associationist philosophers (see Associationism), as well as in the American functionalist
school of psychology (see Functionalism) and the Darwinian theory of evolution, both of
which emphasize the way that individuals adapt and adjust to the environment.

II
. THE WORK OF WATSON

John B. Watson
John B. Watson
American psychologist John B. Watson believed psychologists should study
observable behavior instead of speculating about a person’s inner thoughts and
feelings. Watson’s approach, which he termed behaviorism in the early 1910s,
dominated psychology for the first half of the 20th century.
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Behaviorism was first developed in the early 20th century by the American psychologist
John B. Watson. The dominant view of that time was that psychology is the study of
inner experiences or feelings by subjective, introspective methods. Watson did not deny
the existence of inner experiences, but he insisted that these experiences could not be
studied because they were not observable. He was greatly influenced by the pioneering
investigations of the Russian physiologists Ivan P. Pavlov and Vladimir M. Bekhterev on
conditioning of animals (classical conditioning). Watson proposed to make the study of
psychology scientific by using only objective procedures such as laboratory experiments
designed to establish statistically significant results. The behavioristic view led him to
formulate a stimulus-response theory of psychology. In this theory all complex forms of
behavior—emotions, habits, and such—are seen as composed of simple muscular and
glandular elements that can be observed and measured. He claimed that emotional
reactions are learned in much the same way as other skills.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov won the 1904 Nobel Prize in physiology or
medicine. Pavlov is best known for his work on reflex behavior.
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Watson's stimulus-response theory resulted in a tremendous increase in research activity
on learning in animals and in humans, from infancy to early adulthood. Between 1920
and midcentury, behaviorism dominated psychology in the United States and also had
wide international influence. By the 1950s, the new behavioral movement had produced a
mass of data on learning that led such American experimental psychologists as Edward
C. Tolman, Clark L. Hull, and B. F. Skinner to formulate their own theories of learning
and behavior based on laboratory experiments instead of introspective observations.

III
. THE WORK OF SKINNER

B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
American psychologist B. F. Skinner became famous for his pioneering research on
learning and behavior. During his 60-year career, Skinner discovered important
principles of operant conditioning, a type of learning that involves reinforcement
and punishment. A strict behaviorist, Skinner believed that operant conditioning
could explain even the most complex of human behaviors.
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Skinner's position, known as radical (or basic) behaviorism, is similar to Watson's view
that psychology is the study of the observable behavior of individuals interacting with
their environment. Skinner, however, disagrees with Watson's position that inner
processes, such as feelings, should be excluded from study. He maintains that these inner
processes should be studied by the usual scientific methods, with particular emphasis on
controlled experiments using individual animals and humans. His research with animals,
focusing on the kind of learning—known as operant conditioning—that occurs as a
consequence of stimuli, demonstrates that complex behavior such as language and
problem solving can be studied scientifically. He postulated a type of psychological
conditioning known as reinforcement.

IV.
RESEARCH STUDIES

Koko
Koko
Studies of Koko the gorilla have greatly enhanced the field of animal behavior.
Penny Patterson, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University, taught Koko to sign.
Patterson chose sign language because all primates, with the exception of humans,
lack the necessary vocal apparatus for verbal language. Koko eventually used sign
to ask for a voice. Here, Koko asks Patterson for an orange by extending her left
arm away from her body.
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Since 1950, behavioral psychologists have produced an impressive amount of basic
research directed at understanding how various forms of behavior are developed and
maintained. These studies have included the role of (1) the interactions preceding
behavior, such as the attention span and perceptual processes; (2) changes in behavior
itself, such as the formation of skills; (3) interactions following behavior, such as the
effects of incentives or rewards and punishments; and (4) conditions prevailing over all
the events, such as prolonged emotional stress and deprivations of the essentials of life.

Some of these studies were conducted with humans in rooms especially equipped with
observational devices and also in natural settings, as in school or at home. Other studies
used animals, particularly rats and pigeons, as subjects, in standard laboratory settings.
Most studies with animals required simple responses. For example, the animal was
trained to press a lever or peck a disk in order to receive something of value, such as
food, or to avoid painful stimulation, such as a slight electric shock.

At the same time, psychologists have undertaken studies using behavioral principles on
practical problems. This work has yielded a body of knowledge known as behavior
modification, or applied behavior analysis. Applied behavioral research has been carried
out in three main areas. The first focuses on the techniques of psychological treatment for
troubled adults and children with behavior disorders. This area is known as behavior
therapy. The second centers on improving teaching and training methods. Some studies
have explored the teaching processes used in the educational system from preschool to
college; others have focused on training in business and industry and in the armed forces.
Methods of programmed instruction have been developed. Many studies have dealt with
the problems of improving teaching and training methods for handicapped children at
home, in school, or in institutions. The third area of applied research is concerned with
the long- and short-term effects of drugs on behavior. In these studies, drugs usually are
administered to animals in various dosages and combinations. Changes are then observed
in the way in which these animals perform repititous tasks, such as pressing a lever.

V.
INFLUENCE OF BEHAVIORISM

The initial influence of behaviorism on psychology was to minimize the introspective

study of the mental processes, emotions, and feelings and to substitute the study of the
objective behavior of individuals in relation to their environment by means of
experimental methods. This orientation suggested a way to relate human and animal
research and to bring psychology into line with the natural sciences, such as physics,
chemistry, and biology.

Present-day behaviorism has extended its influence on psychology in three ways. It has
replaced the mechanical concept of stimuli and responses with a functional concept that
emphasizes the meaningfulness of stimulating conditions to the individual. It has
introduced a research method for the experimental study of a single individual. Finally, it
has demonstrated that behavioral concepts and principles can be applied to many
practical problems.

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Gestalt Psychology, school of psychology that deals mainly with the processes of
perception. According to Gestalt psychology, images are perceived as a pattern or a
whole rather than merely as a sum of distinct component parts. The context of an image
plays a key role. For instance, in the context of a city silhouette the shape of a spire is
perceived as a church steeple. Gestalt psychology tries to formulate the laws governing
such perceptual processes.

Gestalt psychology began as a protest. At the beginning of the 20th century,

associationism dominated psychology. The associationist view that stimuli are perceived
as parts and then built into images excluded as much as it sought to explain; for instance,
it allowed little room for such human concepts as meaning and value. About 1910,
German researchers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka rejected the
prevailing order of scientific analysis in psychology. They did not, however, reject
science; rather they sought a scientific approach more nearly related to the subject matter
of psychology. They adopted that of field theory, newly developed in physics. This model
permitted them to look at perception in terms other than the mechanistic atomism of the
associationists.

Gestalt psychologists found perception to be heavily influenced by the context or

configuration of the perceived elements. The word Gestalt can be translated from the
German approximately as “configuration.” The parts often derive their nature and
purpose from the whole and cannot be understood apart from it. Moreover, a
straightforward summation process of individual elements cannot account for the whole.
Activities within the total field of the whole govern the perceptual processes.

The approach of Gestalt psychology has been extended to research in areas as diverse as
thinking, memory, and the nature of aesthetics. Topics in social psychology have also
been studied from the structuralist Gestalt viewpoint, as in Kurt Lewin's work on group
dynamics. It is in the area of perception, however, that Gestalt psychology has had its
greatest influence.

In addition, several contemporary psychotherapies are termed Gestalt. These are

constructed along lines similar to Gestalt psychology's approach to perception. Human
beings respond holistically to experience; according to Gestalt therapists, any separation
of mind and body is artificial. Accurate perception of one's own needs and of the world is
vital in order to balance one's experience and achieve “good Gestalten.” Movement away
from awareness breaks the holistic response, or Gestalt. Gestalt therapists attempt to
restore an individual's natural, harmonic balance by heightening awareness. The emphasis
is on present experience, rather than on recollections of infancy and early childhood as in
psychoanalysis. Direct confrontation with one's fears is encouraged.
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Experimental Psychology, application of laboratory techniques to investigations of mind

and behavior, including such subjects as perception, memory, thinking, learning, and
problem solving.

Experimental psychology as a defined field of science began with the German physicist
Gustav Theodor Fechner, whose Elements of Psychophysics (1860; trans. 1966) presented
experimental evidence for relating magnitudes of sensation in the person being tested to
objective magnitudes of stimulation. Then, in 1879, the German psychologist Wilhelm
Max Wundt established the first research laboratory for psychological experimentation.
Wundt trained people to describe in detail sensations evoked by systematically controlled
stimuli. The psychologist also measured reaction times in tests of varied complexity and
tried to catalog the components of consciousness and to work out the laws of their
combination.

Wundt and his conception of psychology dominated the field until the turn of the 20th
century but then lost authority as introspective methods proved incapable of deciding
such controversial issues as whether imageless thoughts are possible. Rivals in the field
rebelled against Wundt's rules. For example, the German psychologist Hermann
Ebbinghaus conducted a monumental investigation of memory that involved rote learning
of strings of nonsense syllables, thus setting a pattern for succeeding generations of
psychologists in search of laws of learning. The same goal was pursued by scientists who
began to use laboratory animals for psychological experiments; the American
psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike gave both methodological and conceptual direction
to this trend. Thereafter in behaviorism, as promulgated by the American psychologist
John Broadus Watson, psychology was defined as the science of behavior, as opposed to
the science of mental life. This development meant the rejection of previous mentalistic
concepts and introspective methods.

Introspection continued to be used, however, in Gestalt psychology, which began as an

approach to perception and was later extended to problem solving, learning, creativity,
and even social dynamics. Gestalt psychology emphasized configuration, relationship,
and active organization, in contrast to behaviorist conceptions.

Experimental psychology thus encompasses a considerable diversity of methods,

interests, and viewpoints, and it has found practical applications in industry, education,
and therapy, among other areas. Traditional concerns with psychophysics, perception,
memory, and learning persist, but they are complemented by physiological approaches
and the use of statistical procedures in experiment design and data analysis; computer
technology has also had an impact on both method and theory. The powerful influence of
behaviorist doctrine has been mitigated by the revival of cognitive conceptions and a
renewed alliance with biology. As yet, however, no one theory unifies experimental
psychology; its practice crosses the boundaries of many fields of psychological interest
and schools of psychological thought. See also Psychology.
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Currently, many therapists describe their approach as eclectic or integrative, meaning that
they use ideas and techniques from a variety of therapies. Many therapists like the
opportunity to draw from many theories and not limit themselves to one or two. Most
therapists who adopt an eclectic approach have a rationale for which techniques they use
with specific clients, rather than just choosing an approach randomly or because it suits
them at the time.

One of the most influential eclectic approaches is cognitive-behavioral therapy. Other

eclectic approaches use other combinations of therapies.

1
. Cognitive-Behavioral
Therapy

There are almost no pure cognitive or behavioral therapists. Usually therapists combine
cognitive and behavioral techniques in an approach known as cognitive-behavioral
therapy. For example, to treat a woman with depression, a therapist may help her identify
irrational thinking patterns that cause the distressing feelings and to replace these
irrational thoughts with new ways of thinking. The therapist may also train her in
relaxation techniques and have her try new behaviors that help her become more active
and less depressed. The client then reports the results back to the therapist.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy has rapidly become one of the most popular and influential
forms of psychotherapy, in part because it takes a relatively short period of time
compared to humanistic and psychoanalytic therapies, and also because of its ability to
treat a wide range of problems. Sometimes cognitive-behavioral therapy takes only a few
sessions, but more often it extends for 20 or 30 sessions over four to six months. The
length of therapy usually depends on the severity and number of the client’s problems.

2
. Other Eclectic
Approaches

Some therapists have one particular way of understanding clients—that is, they adhere to
one theory of personality—but use many techniques from a variety of theories. Other
therapists may understand clients using two or three theories of personality and only use
techniques to bring about change that are consistent with those theories. Some therapists
have combined psychodynamic and behavioral therapies in ways to help their clients deal
with fears and anxieties but also understand their causes.

Therapists may use different approaches to treat different problems. For example, a
therapist might find that clients who are grieving over the loss of a spouse may respond
best to a humanistic approach, in which they can share their grieving and their hurts with
the therapist. However, the same therapist may use a cognitive-behavioral approach with
a person who reports being anxious most of the time.

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The way a teacher organizes and administers routines to make classroom life as
productive and satisfying as possible. What some people might describe narrowly as
"discipline." For example, teachers with good classroom management clarify how various
things (such as distribution of supplies and equipment) are to be done and may even
begin the school year by having students practice the expected procedures.