discuss the relevance of educational psychology to the primary school teacher.
Answers
A teacher acts as a philosopher and a guide to the students. He must know the growth and development of the child and his requirements at different levels. Educational psychology helps the teacher to study the ability, interests, intelligence, needs and adopt different techniques of teaching for effective communication. The utility of educational psychology for the teachers has been emphasized in both theory and practices of teaching and learning.
The importance of educational psychology for a teacher can be divided into two aspects i.e.:
(i) To study teaching and learning situations.
(ii) Application of teaching and learning principles.
(I) To study teaching and learning situations
Educational psychology contributes a lot for increasing the teaching efficiency of the teacher in different areas mentioned below:-
(a) Individual difference
A teacher has to deal carefully with a group of students in class room situation. As there, are wide variations in different abilities among the students. Therefore it is very essential to understand the individual difference of students regarding their ability, interests, attitudes & need at different levels of growth and development.
(b) To know the classroom teaching-learning process
A well developed theory of class room teaching and learning is helpful for transacting the content to the students effectively, which includes class-room climate and the teaching competence which are required for effective communication and presentation of content. A teacher must know the appropriate principles of teaching-learning, different approaches to teaching for better result of teaching-learning process.
(c) Awareness of effective methods of teaching
The method of teaching is based on the developmental characteristic of the students. For example History is taught effectively to small children with the help of story telling method because small children like stories. So the classroom teaching depends on the teachers’ knowledge about the interest of students and methods of teaching for the students of different age-groups.