About Careers in Educational Psychology

People who work in educational psychology study learning. They want to know how people learn within educational settings, how effective interventions are, what prompts people to teach, and how schools function as organizations and cultures. The term "educational psychology" is often used interchangeably with "school psychology," but the two are not actually the same.

Significance

People who work in educational psychology look at issues in the school settings. Most of them deal with theory and research, and they work to understand why educators want to teach, how and why people learn, and what kind of organizational structure schools have. This is not the same as the hierarchy of school board-principal-vice principal-teacher, but rather the more informal structure that the school contains based on how a large number of people sort themselves based on being similar to and different from others.

Function

The function of a researcher in this area is to understand the way that people learn when they are young, in middle age, and as they get into their senior years, because how people learn and the ways that they are able to process information do change somewhat as they age. It is believed that there are several stages of cognitive development that each person works through; the educational psychologist would be the person to identify these stages and teach educators how to use them effectively. He or she would also be the one to determine where a particular person was within these stages so that learning could be maximized.

Misconceptions

The most common misconception about educational psychology is that it is the same as school psychology and that the two are interchangeable. However, they are not. School psychology deals with psychologists who go to the schools and work the people there, especially troubled students with behavior and/or learning difficulties. Educational psychology is focused on people who work with the theories and the research behind the behavior, as opposed to working directly with the behavior itself.

Benefits

There are many benefits to working in the field of educational psychology. Human beings are fascinating subjects of study, and each one of them has his or her own set of characteristics. These include behavioral and cognitive issues, but they also include moral issues. The challenges and abilities that people have, as well as their skill sets, all come from learning. When people who work in educational psychology find new and better ways to teach people and to help them retain what they have learned, a large number of people can benefit from that.

Potential

The potential for careers in educational psychology is huge. People have great interest in learning new things, and humans are inquisitive by nature. With that being the case there is always room for new theories and new ideas that will help people to learn better and faster and that will help them hold onto that knowledge and pass it on to others. Whether the research is done in the lab or in the classroom it is important work that could change the face of education around the world.