The history of Educational Psychology: Present

Cognitive Psychology

By the mid 1950s cognitive views of learning gained ascendency over thestimulus-response approach. Now questions pertaining to the role of mentalphenomenon in learning and development were resurrected. Thus, with the renewedresearch interest into how individuals acquire, retain, recall and transforminformation, investigations of higher mental processes

Burrhus Frederic Skinner - Operant Conditioning

Skinner is regarded as the father of Operant Conditioning, but his work was based on Thorndike’s (1898) law of effect

The theory of B.F. Skinner is based upon the idea that learning is a function of change in overt behavior. Changes in behavior are the result of an individual’s response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment. A response produces a consequence such as defining a word, hitting a ball, or solving a math problem. When a particular Stimulus-Response (S-R) pattern is reinforced (rewarded), the individual is conditioned to respond.The organism can emit responses instead of only eliciting response due to an external stimulus.

Raymond Cattell, 1905-1998

Dr. Cattell, a psychologist with a background in chemistry and statistics, spent 70 years contributing to the application of scientific methods to the study of human behavior.   His most noted work comes from his statistical use of applying the factor analysis concept to develop a well respected model used in personality/trait assessment called the 16-Factor Personality Model.

Jerome Bruner, 1915-present
 

Is an American psychologist whose contributions were in human cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology. Bruner also made contributions is developmental psychology, language development, and legal psychology.