Toward a Psychological Ecology of the Classroom

Abstract

Two contributions of psychological and educational research stand out in a broad view of our resources for an understanding of social interaction in the classroom. Both are the products of essentially experimental work. The first is a growing body of knowledge about the laws of social behavior. The second is a battery of instruments for diagnosing the social characteristics of individual pupils. These contributions enable us to give a lot of if, then advice. We can say that if children are rewarded or punished or coerced or deprived or praised or blamed or gratified in the classroom as children were in this or that experimental study, then they are likely to behave as classroom members in certain ways. And we can say that if children do thus and so under the conditions of particular tests, then they are able or disposed to behave sim ilarly when like conditions arise in their school lives. Such conditional statements often turn out well enough to facilitate greatly the tasks of educational guidance. But these accomplishments leave us with a need for another kind of research product. Our knowledge of what pupils are likely to do under certain conditions and our devices for meas uring what they are able or disposed to do leave us at this late date with a need for knowledge of their actual behavior and their actual conditions of life at school. This need can be met only by recording and analysis of field observations. It calls for a psychological ecology of the classroom. We would like to men tion at once some possible benefits of developments along this line which seem pertinent to the theme for the present collection of papers. **