Reading: The natural interface between developmental and educational psychology

Abstract

Not so long ago there was general (though not universal) agreement within the psychological community that associative and/or behavioral learning theory would at some time provide answers to most of the questions one would be interested in asking. Psychologists who were interested in verbal behavior were generally in accord that if we were diligent enough in mapping out the effects of various practice conditions, and if all of the subtleties of various forms of transfer were understood, it would be possible to provide an account of the acquisition and use of language. Most developmental psychologists were also comfortable within the learning theory framework. Development is, of course, a process of change, and learning theory provided strong transition rules describing how an organism moved from one state to another. Educational psychologists were attracted to learning theory for the same reasons as developmental psychologists. The hope was that by tine tuning practice schedules, arranging appropriately spaced review sessions, and building in procedures that emphasized positive transfer features between different instructional units, highly effective instructional approaches could be developed. In short, there was general agreement in virtually all areas of psychology that “the phenomenon of learning is fundamentally the same whether studied in the animal, child, or adult” (Munn, 1954, p. 449). In the late 1960s the general consensus about the utility of learning theory began to unravel. Psychologists who were previously interested in “verbal learning” and “verbal behavior” began to place increasing emphasis on verbal memory (Tulving & Madigan, 1970). This shift was considerably more than a mere change of labels. There was also an enormous change in emphasis. The study of verbal memory quickly became the study of the contents and structure of memory with little emphasis on how that content and structure had evolved or changed. There were also changes occurring within developmental and educational psychology. Developmental psychologists began to be disenchanted with learning theory for many of the same reasons as psychologists interested in adult functioning (White, 1970). Moreover, the minor