Education and its intersection with psychology is the topic of this work. If it were not for the small (but readable) typeface, it would have been a multi-volume work. From contents pages through the detailed name and subject indexes more than 1,000 pages later, it summarizes the breadth and variety of theory, methods, practice, and research in educational psychology. Sponsored by the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association, it is similar in concept to other Macmillan education handbooks, such as the
Handbook of Research on Teaching [
RBB N 15 96]. The editors, both professors of psychology, take care to place educational psychology in the context of what happens in schooling and the society at large.
Each of the five major parts has five to seven chapters written by knowledgeable scholars, mostly from the U.S., but also from England, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Ireland, and Israel. The state of knowledge in such areas as cognition and motivation, child development, teaching, and statistics is summarized in these chapters. The chapter on assessment methods, for example, surveys the literature on different types of exams, computer-based problem solving, and portfolios. Each survey chapter concludes with a bibliography of all the books and journal articles discussed. Some chapters contain tables or graphs.
This synthesis of the state of the art will be useful to students, practitioners, and researchers alike. Recommended to all academic libraries and other libraries with educational psychology collections.
This work, edited by Berliner (psychology & education, Arizona State Univ.) and Calfee (psychology & education, Stanford), provides an overview of the field in 33 chapters organized around five major sections: Cognition and Motivation, Development and Individual Differences, School Curriculum and Psychology, Teaching and Instruction, and Foundation of the Discipline. The volume discusses theories, research, and methodologies of leading educational psychologists throughout the world. The first two sections deal with developmental and individual differences in the areas of cognition, learning, motivation, and instruction. The third and fourth sections cover the structure and use of knowledge and review teaching and instructional methods. In the final section, scholars provide overviews of prevailing themes, issues, and empirical findings discussed in previous chapters. The scholarly articles include extensive references for further reading. This is intended for practicing researchers, university professors, and graduate students and is highly recommended for collections serving them.?Barbara S. Meagher, Central Connecticut State Univ., New Britain
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
