Science and Individualism in Educational Psychology: problems for practice and points of departure

Abstract

It is mainly through schools that the profession of educational psychology is maintained. What assumptions are made in the training of such people? Critically, as Olssen argues, they are assumptions which have formed the basis of psychology itself and were historically embedded in discursive traditions at the turn of the century, traditions which constituted the generative source of the way the discipline of educational psychology was to develop. Assumptions about the nature of science were important, as Rom Harre and others have argued. More important, though, is the assumption of individualism: the presupposition that problems of learning are problems of an individual child, to be fixed by personalised intervention. The influence of psychology on education is often hidden, but in the case of individual psychology it is often overt. If there are problems with psychology, including the psychology of individual development, then educational psychology will need very careful scrutiny.