-
5 BCE
Democritus
Democritus wrote about the advantages
conferred by schooling and the influence of the home on learning -
4 BCE
Plato and Aristotle
Discussed the kinds of education appropriate for different
kinds of people, the possibilities and limits of moral education, the role of the teacher, the effect of art on the development of the individual, and the means and
methods of teaching. -
35
Quintilian
Quintilian (35-100 A.D.) argued in favor of the public rather than
private education. He condemned physical force as a method of discipline. He claimed that good
teaching and an attractive curriculum address most behavior problems. -
1492
Juan Luis Vives
Juan Luis Vives (1492- 1540) noted that what is to be learned must be practiced, to engage student interest, the need to adjust instruction for all students, especially for the "feeble-minded,", and the need for students to be evaluated based on their past accomplishments. -
Comenius
Comenius (1592-1671) taught that understanding, not
memory is the goal of instruction. He claimed that parents have a role to play in the schooling. He wrote texts that were based on a developmental theory and in them inaugurated the use of visual aids in instruction. -
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841)
May be considered the first voice of the modern era of psychoeducational thought. Herbartians promoted teaching using a logical progression of learning. Herbartians first made the pedagogical technique the focus of scientific study. -
G. Stanley Hall
G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) founder of the child-study movement. He founded the first and second English language psychology journals. His study of the contents of children's minds began in 1883 and he developed 194 questionnaires to determine what youngsters and adolescents knew. The Boston study may qualify as the first empirical educational psychology study. -
Joseph Mayer Rice
Joseph Mayer Rice (1857- 1934) is known as the father of research on teaching. Rice presented his empirical classroom-based research. -
John Dewey
John Dewey (1859-1952). Dewey and his colleagues at the University of Chicago founded the functionalist school of psychology. He founded an elementary school as a place to learn more philosophy, more social theory, and more psychology. Dewey’s basic democratic concern for building relationships between the educational psychologist and the classroom teacher is based on equality. -
Hugo Munsterberg
Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916) is known as the founder of applied psychology. Musterberg and Thor Luke's child study movement failed because it was not good science and because they developed some very strange views of education and child-rearing, however, it was an enormous legacy. -
William James
William James (1842-1910) was considered the central figure in the establishment of psychology in America. James saw education as a crucial element of society, with the school a place for habits to be acquired by design, not willy-nilly. Talks to Teachers on Psychology was published in 1899. It marked the beginning of a vigorous educational psychology presence in America. -
B.F. Skinner
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) analyzed basic behavioral processes. He was a systematist and a philosopher and He applied behavior analysis, in which he addressed matters of social importance -
World War II
Some of the people who influenced educational psychology, included Walter Borg, Lee J. Cronbach, John Flanagan, N. L. Gage, Robert Gagne, Robert Glaser, J. P. Guilford, and B. F. Skinner. The roots of some of the changes that were to come in educational psychology had their origin in World War II (1939-1945). Educational psychologists seemed to be interested in the laws of learning, not in issues of schooling and teaching. -
Dael Lee Wolfle
Dael Lee Wolfle (1906-2002) wrote about psychological textbooks in 1947 and gave a formula for writing textbooks in educational and child psychology. -
John B. Carroll
John B. Carroll (1916-2023) published his model of school learning (1963a). He also wrote about the discipline of educational psychology. -
Edward Lee Thorndike
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1947) promoted the belief that science and only science would save education. His work, Principles of Psychology was published in 1890. Thorndike believed that only empirical work should guide education. He had absolute certainty about the potential of a rational, scientific approach to education. -
Philip W. Jackson
Philip W. Jackson (1928-2015). In 1981, he laid the problems of our field squarely at Thorndike's feet. He cited four ways in which the introduction to the maiden issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology set the stage for the difficulties that would follow.