270 Educational Psychology
with this observation. Others who often share the title of
founder with Aristotle include Democritus (460–370 B.C.E.),
Quintilian (A.D. 35–100), and Comenius (1592–1671).
Each of these philosophers made contributions to philoso-
phy in general and education in particular. For example,
Democritus voiced the opinion that education is advanta-
geous and that the home environment has a substantial
impact on learning; Quintilian felt that good teachers, when
combined with a worthwhile curriculum, might help control
behavioral problems; and Comenius noted that memorization
is not the same as understanding and that teachers’ own
learning is optimized when they have the opportunity to
teach others (Berliner, 1993). Additionally, both Aristotle and
Quintilian felt that teachers should make the effort to tailor
learning to the individual, taking into account the individual
differences of their students (Berliner, 1993).
Although each of these early philosopher-educators can be
considered forefathers of modern-day educational psycholo-
gists, it may be the views of Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540)
that would resonate most closely with today’s educational
psychologist. His 1531 book, De Tradendis Disciplinus (The
Art of Teaching),has been called the first major book on psy-
chology. In this book, Vives says, “We must first examine, for
each type of instruction, the question of what, how, to what
extent, by whom and where it should be taught.” Vives goes
on to note that the teacher should be the student’s guide and
should help individual students make decisions about their
studies based on the student’s own interests and abilities
(Ibanez, 1994).
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN THE EIGHTEENTH
AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES
In the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, there were
strong European influences on the early development path
of educational psychology as a discipline (Grinder, 1989;
Hilgard, 1996). Hilgard (1996) identified four Europeans
who he felt influenced both conceptions and practices in in-
struction, teaching, and learning: Rousseau (1712–1788)
from France, Pestalozzi (1746–1827) from Switzerland, and
Herbart (1776–1841) and Froebel (1782–1852), both from
Germany. Rousseau’s book Émile(1762/1979) emphasized
that children discover things for themselves and described
some of the instructional implications of this fundamental
assumption. Pestalozzi (1820/1977), a Swiss lawyer by train-
ing, developed a model school that incorporated many of the
ideas that are current today in educational psychology. For
example, he stressed that students must be active learners,
that education involved personal growth in addition to sim-
ple knowledge acquisition, that psychology could be used
as a guide for developing and implementing instructional
methods, and that schools should be warm, nurturing
environments.
While Rousseau and Pestalozzi made important contribu-
tions to our thinking about students, schools, subject matter,
and instruction, their ideas were primarily based on their
moral and ethical views and their experience. It remained
for Johann Friedrich Herbart of Germany to call for a more
“scientific” approach to studying educational conceptions
and practices.
In 1824, Johann Herbart published Psychology as Science,
regarded as one of the first treatises suggesting that educa-
tional conceptions and educational practices could be studied
scientifically and that the instructional process itself was
different from the subject matter being taught. Herbart was
the first to provide a psychological rather than philosophical
or moral substratum for his ideas and applications. Like
Vives, Herbart believed that educational programs should be
developed based on the interests, aptitudes, and abilities of
students. Herbart’s followers, the Herbartians, developed a
system of teaching that followed a “logical progression” of
five steps that could be applied to nearly any subject matter:
(a) prepare the student’s mind for the coming lesson (e.g.,
arouse students’ interests and relate the new material to famil-
iar ideas); (b) present the lesson (e.g., use appropriate means
such as using storytelling with young children); (c) compare,
or associate the new lesson with material previously learned
(e.g., use concrete things and experiences); (d) generalization
or abstraction (e.g., express ideas conceptually by using prin-
ciples and general rules); and, finally, (e) require that the stu-
dents use, or apply, the new material appropriately (e.g., have
students practice using varied examples) (Berliner, 1993;
Grinder, 1989; Hilgard, 1996).
The work of Friedrich Froebel had a very direct effect
on educational thinking and practice in the United States
(Hilgard, 1996). Froebel, the founder of the kindergarten
movement, was a bit of a romantic and thought of kinder-
garten as a place to train children in cooperative living. He
also wanted to foster creativity and active learning in chil-
dren. In 1873 the first public kindergarten was established in
St. Louis, and by 1880, America had over 400 private
kindergartens. At the same time, the public school system
and the idea of compulsory school attendance emerged.
Many of these ideas about universal education and its pur-
poses were influenced by the optimistic views of society and
the ideas of these European philosophers and statesmen. The
transition to a greater psychological basis for educational