Spelling out his future government’s priorities in 1996, the would-be
UK prime minister Tony Blair famously put it like this: “Education,
education, education.” Ever the shrewd politician, Blair was addressing
the anxieties of millions of parents who, understandably enough,
want their children to have the best schooling possible. Inevitably,
debates over what works best in education are both intense and rife.
Psychologists make an important contribution, from the question of
whether children should be placed in streamed classes, to how best to
boost their academic performance with praise and discipline.
Educational psychologists usually train first as teachers before beginning
postgraduate studies in educational psychology. Once qualified, they
spend much of their time assessing and helping children with special
educational needs, and they advise teachers and policymakers on the
optimum conditions for learning. Researchers in educational psychology
test different teaching approaches and styles, and they study the factors –
such as working memory and self-discipline – associated with children’s
success at school.
Teachers
Parents often deliberate anxiously over which school to send their child
to. But the evidence suggests that teachers matter far more than schools,
and in fact there’s often more variation in quality between teachers at
the same school than between teachers at different schools, which seem-
ingly undermines the efforts some parents make to find a school with
the best teachers.
A non-profit movement in the United States, called Teach for America,
recruits graduate students to teach in poor areas, and they’ve kept meticu-
lous records of the relative success of their different recruits as measured
by pupil grade-achievement. The organization has noticed that factors