Educational Psychology: Definition, Scope, Theory, and Benefits

Understanding The Psychology Of Education

What is the psychology of education (educational psychology)? Understanding the psychology of education is one of the branches of psychology that focuses on learning how to understand teaching and learning in an educational environment.

There are also explaining that education is the science of psychology and applied science which outlines the various human activities in relation to the situation of education. One example is learning how to draw attention to the students so that they are more receptive to the lessons taught.

From the explanation above can be drawn the conclusion that the psychology in education meant to influence educational activities so that the process of learning and teaching-learning can take place more effectively by observing response psychiatric and behavior of learners.

Educational Psychology According To Experts

In order to better understand what is meant by educational psychology, then we can refer to the opinion of some experts, as follows:

1. Whittington

According to Whiterington (1982), understanding the psychology of education is a systematic study of the processes and factors related to the education of human beings.

2. Sumadi Suryabrata

According to Sumadi Suryabrata (1984), the sense of educational psychology is a psychological knowledge about the educational situation in protégé.

3. Elliott et al

According to Elliot et al (1999), the sense of educational psychology is the application of the theories of psychology to the study of developmental, learning, motivation, teaching and problems that arise in the world of education.

4. Muhibin Shah

According to Muhibin Shah (2003), understanding educational psychology is a discipline of psychology that studies the psychological problems that are happening in the world of education.

5. Tardif

According to Tardif (in Shah, 1997:13), understanding the psychology of education is a field of study that deals with the application of knowledge about human behavior in a variety of educational efforts.

6. Barlow

According to Barlow (1985), understanding the psychology of education is a knowledge-based on psychological research that provides a series of resources to assist a teacher in the teaching-learning process more effectively.

Explanation of the experts it can be concluded that educational psychology is the psychology that affects the basis of the teaching-learning process in education.

Scope Of Psychology Education

In General, educational psychology studies the behavior of everyone in the process of education, that teachers and students. In General, experts limit the subject of psychology education in three ways, namely:
Learning, that is the subject that covers a wide range of theories, principles, characteristics of student behavior, and others.
The learning process, i.e. a subject about the stages of works and events in the student learning process.
The learning situation, i.e., the subject matter of mood and the State of the environment, either physical or non-physical activity related to student learning.

According to Samuel Smith, as quoted by Sumadi Suryabrata (1984), there are 16 topics of discussion that are included in the scope of the psychology of education, namely:
The characteristics of the bringing of the birth (heredity).
Physical environment (physical structure).
Student development (growth).
All process behavior (behavior process).
All the factors that affect the learning process (factors that condition learning).
All the laws and theories of learning (laws and theories of learning).
Measurement, i.e. all the basic principles and limitations of measurement or evaluation (measurement: basic principles and definitions).
Transfer learning, covering the fields of study (transfer of learning subject matters).
All the practical points of view about measurement (practical aspects of measurement).
Basic statistics of Science (element of statistics).
Spiritual/mental health (mental hygiene).
Education that forms characters (character educations).
Knowledge about psychology majors in high school (psychology of secondary school subjects).
Psychological knowledge about the field of study of elementary school (psychology of elementary school subjects).

Educational Psychology Theory

Psychology in education has some basic theories that became a cornerstone of the basic concept and its implementation, such as:

1. Behaviorism

In Behaviorism (behavior), which is the learning is a change in behavior that is the impact of the interaction between stimulus and response. A person can be said to have learned if there is a change in people's behavior.

2. Operational Management Theory

In the theory of operations management mentioned that a person's behavior is controlled by the consequences that may occur, whether that support positive and negative as well as positive and negative punishment.

Positive support was something fun on behavior, and negative support is to delete things that are not as pleasant as an acceptable attitude. While positive punishment is a punishment to reduce unpleasant behavior, and negative punishment is a punishment to reduce unpleasant behavior by taking something that is fun.

3. The classical Harmonic Theory

This theory involves learning new behavior through a process of continued support. In classical harmonic theory there are three stages, namely;

Stage 1, before conditions; stimuli from the environment produce a response that has not studied and there is a response that hasn't been thought of.
Phase 2, during Adjustment; stimuli from the environment do not generate the response to stimuli that are already known.
Stage 3, after the Remediation; the process of the formation of a new response.

4. Cognitive Theories

The theory of cognitive (awareness) focus on change processes and mental structures occur as a result of the attempt to understand the surrounding environment.

5. The theory of Connectionism

The theory of connectionism (Association) developed by Edward l. Thorndike (1878-1949), known as stimulus-response theory. In theory, it is mentioned that the stimulus will send you messages about the five senses and the responding behavior.

6. Gestalt Theory

In Gestalt theory explained that the cognitive processes happen through message settings or patterns that are associated with a component so that it becomes a single entity. According to this theory, generally, people tend to see things in their surroundings thoroughly.

The Benefits Of Psychology Education

Essentially educational psychology has many benefits for the world of education. According to Muhammad and Wiyani (2013), there are ten benefits to be gained from studying the psychology of education, namely:

Understand the difference of understanding of students, educators (teachers) to each student will produce a learning interaction that is right on target as well as effective and efficient learning.

The creation of a conducive learning atmosphere, the effectiveness of teaching-learning activities are strongly influenced by the ability of teachers in creating a conducive learning atmosphere.

Appropriate learning strategies, by studying educational psychology then a teacher can know the character of each of his students. So it will be found appropriate learning strategies so as to produce an effective teaching-learning process.
Provide guidance for students, this relates to the confidence of students against teachers. With the confidence of pupils to a teacher than the learning process will be more effective and easy.

Proper interaction with students, this is related to all the principles of psychology that underlie the right way of communicating. The proper way of communicating will have an impact on the teaching-learning process.

The existence of the evaluation of learning, of teachers who have good psychology, will be able to give an assessment or evaluation of the learning outcomes fairly without discriminating against each of their students.

Motivate learning, teachers are able to give support, encouragement to their students will make the students learn more enterprising. The ability of educational psychology obtained by the teacher so that it is able to motivate their students.

Determination of learning objectives, educational psychology, and then the teacher can determine learning objectives in accordance with the desired as a result of learning. Learning objectives to measure whether the teaching-learning process is successful or not.