| Summary: | "The last decade has seen important changes of emphasis within general psychology that make its theories more pertinent to education. Ten years ago the dominant psychology was that of Hull and his followers. Their emphasis on stimulus-response connections, reduction of primary drives, and reinforcement, while useful for explaining the learning of single tasks in the laboratory, seemed not to be very enlightening to the educator. Today the general psychologist is as concerned as the educator with meanings. Harlow demonstrates how long-continued experience facilitates learning in monkeys. Piaget and Inhelder demonstrate the emergence of disciplined thought from the child's long years of trial and error. Skinner proposes to design learning sequences such that each success on one question makes the next question more meaningful. Underwood shows that forgetting is primarily the result of interference from prior associations. Osgood, Kendler, and others advance from Hull to a theory of mediated learning. At the same time, motivational theory has broadened to recognize that mastery and understanding of the environment seems to be a basic source of satisfaction. White's paper (1959) on the need for "competence" climaxes a substantial series of advances on this front which have included Harlow's observations on manipulation and the work of McClelland and others on achievement motivation. The same decade has seen vigorous re-examination of the purposes and quality of American education. The first great result was a marked extension of testing and counseling, of special programs for the talented and the handicapped, and, in the elementary school, of more flexible administrative arrangements for teaching. These efforts put well-established psychological knowledge to use. The second great result has been radical curriculum revision. In science and mathematics where this work has been carried furthest, the new curricula emphasize not the mastery of facts and calculations but the understanding of scientific and mathematical reasoning. The teacher is called upon to promote understanding and curiosity, and to capitalize upon the pupil's intuitions and discoveries.
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