Psychology and Education

Behavior and personality are two terms that fall within the scope of psychology. The relation of this discipline with education could understand how the application of the principles and explanations of psychology theory and educational practice. Even before the emergence of scientific psychology psychological knowledge has played a leading role in the development of educational theories. The first steps of scientific psychology in the late nineteenth century increased the expectations placed on it. We can, to illustrate this, put the example of Thorndike, who insisted on the need to base the educational proposals with the results of psychological research of an experimental nature, being a supporter of distrust pedagogical opinions lacked psychological basis.

We can say that these two concepts, behavior and personality, in psychology correspond to the object of study of two completely different orientations if not totally opposite of thinking about psychology:

-The first term is considered the object of study of psychology to an orientation that is inspired by the empiricist philosophy, which had as some of their top representatives to J. Locke and D. Hume, who used the famous metaphor of the "tabula rasa" to refer to the mind at the time of birth, ie, they believed that the mind was like a blank slate ("the mind of a person at the time of birth is as a tabula rasa, a blank sheet on which printing experience knowledge ") in which the child's experience in contact with the medium, the stimulation it receives, is what will determine at any time the contents of his psyche. For Locke, all ideas came from experience. In the first half of the twentieth century, 1913, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins, John B. Watson, rejected both introspective techniques as the object of study arguing that overt behavior should be capable of observation and measurement. Behaviorism was recognized as a movement in psychology was aimed theoretical prediction and control of behavior. Since at the time of birth does not possess any innate structure inside, we learn the behavior, and the result of our behavior in a given time, will be the result of our history of learning.

From all this follows the importance of these theories have been learning and number of studies have been dedicated.

-The second term refers to a completely different stream that supports instances structures or underlying personality. From this psychology has made great strides and there are many different orientations and theories explaining the psychological fact. In this paper we focus on what we consider to have had a greater voice in education. Education is much more than instruct, train or inform. Education can not be reduced to the acquisition of conceptual content, but also includes procedural and attitudinal contents. Education should be comprehensive, can not be reduced to the development of one aspect of personality, intellectual, but must be educated to the full development of the individual, where aspects such as emotional, sexual, social, moral have to be served. Since we will deal with the theoretical currents that have wider application, or at least are currently in the field of education, we will define the concepts involved:

- The word education has been used sometimes in a very extensive and is currently under debate and permanent. It is very difficult for the father or mother, the teacher or educator, have a clear idea of ​​what the central issue in teaching and what are the secondary issues to be organized around the first. Education would be a teaching and learning process in which not only have a major role the teacher but the learner and the educational context.

- Teaching: intentional process by which advanced societies seek the historically accumulated cultural wealth both in terms of values ​​and attitudes that are considered appropriate, as the concepts, theories, theoretical systems and procedures, usually performed in coordinates specific time-space (usually in the schools, especially during childhood, adolescence and youth. Teaching is a systematic and organized to impart knowledge, skills and experience through different means and methods, they may be expository, observational or testing, among others.

- Learning: A relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience, can not be explained by a transient stage of the organism, maturation or innate response tendencies (Stephen B. Klein). Learning is gaining knowledge of something, take the memory concepts or properties about these things and have the ability to recover in the future based on stimuli. In education, although it is the individual learner, learning is a response to stimuli from the external world. Gómez Buendía, refers to education and mentions two important contexts, the institutional context where they transmit the knowledge to which we are accustomed to recognize and non-institutional context, which plays an important role as the family or group of friends . To adopt the perfect formula on how to guide the action of the International Commission on Education Education for the XXI Century, convened by UNESCO, proposes four main lessons that will be the pillars of education throughout life: Learning to live together, learning to know, learning to do and learning to be.

Psychology Course for Educators