5/27/10

Lost in the sea of education....

The other day I was talking with several of my former colleagues from grad school and other faculty fellows, about the weakening of Educational Psychology as a field of study and teaching.
The number of Educational Psychology programs at the universities is decreasing, and I am talking here about Ed Psy named programs.
Also the number of Educational Psychology named courses that we teach is decreasing and more faculty from other domains (such as C&I, Teacher education, Early childhood, etc.) teach our Ed Psy courses.

Even if we teach topics from Educational Psychology, the courses have many diverse names such as:
- Learning in the Schools
- Middle School Learner
- Learning and Cognition
- Learning and Development in Schools
- Human Development and Learning
- Education and Human Development


I would be interested to find out what are other TEP SIG members perspective on the questions.
Is our Ed Psy field a dying field?
Do the names used for Ed Psy courses allow other fields to take over and that is why lesser need for Ed Psy faculty?
Is there a real need (in the first place) for Educational Psychology?


Zs

2 comments:

  1. Maybe the name "educational psychology" is decreasing in frequency (though I'm really not convinced that it is). Even if that course title is less frequent, though, it does not mean that ed psych is dying as a field. It could actually mean it has become MORE successful, because its content is becoming integrated with other courses and other parts of teacher education!

    I am reminded of an ongoing discussion in the special education field, in which special educators sometimes ask "What will we special educators ever do if integration of children with disabilities really does become thorough and commonplace? We might all be out of work?!" Success may carry the seeds of its own destruction, and that may be as it should be.

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  2. I agree with what you say, that we might be more successful since our Ed Psy is taught in more teacher education programs.
    What my friends and I were talking about was that more faculty of other fields not exclusively Educational Psychologist teach the Ed Psy type courses. At my former university we had Special Ed, and C&I faculty teach the Ed Psy courses.
    So, others are expert enough to teach ed psy, is not really needed an Educational Psychology graduate to teach our courses.
    Yes, might be were were just biased.

    Anyone else in TEP SIG had some similar conversations?

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