The Psychology of Education

Book excerpt: The Psychology of Education covers the range of contemporary psychological knowledge applied to education. Completely up-to-date and written in an engaging style, this book covers: *the nature of learning *techniques of assessment with an emphasis on current developments in the national curriculum *recent findings on the impact of differences in individual pupils, schools and teachers *ways of involving and motivating pupils *the importance of social disadvantage, and cultural differences of ethnicity and gender, in determining attainment *the nature of children's language, literacy development and the relationship between them *behavioural problems and how to deal with them *key concepts in special needs and the nature of additional provision. Martyn Long encourages teachers to evaluate alternative approaches involved in educational policies and to develop their own teaching methods and whole-school principles and procedures. The book is illustrated throughout with topical statistics, cartoons and empirical material. Each chapter includes a summary, suggestions for further reading and has a list of key implications which can be applied by students in a problem-based scenario. There are questions for discussion which are later followed up in the appendix.