Study and scholarship in educational psychology take place in the newly restructured doctoral program in Learning, Technology, and Culture. The Learning and Development emphasis area within that program prepares scholars to investigate, analyze, and understand more profoundly human learning and development in diverse settings (e.g., schools, workplaces, homes, and communities) and new practices of thinking, communicating, and working engendered by new technologies.

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What is educational psychology anyway?
Educational psychology is not a common term. In fact, you could be interested in issues and problems that are studied by educational psychologists without even knowing it. If you are looking at this Web page, you may be such a person. Here is how we, at Michigan State University, think about educational psychology.

Educational psychology is a field of study. Historically, it has been shaped by the assumption that the analysis of psychological phenomena could serve educational purposes and help to solve educational problems. Traditionally, educational psychologists have examined, theorized about, and applied insights about learning, memory, development (especially cognitive development), motivation, intelligence, problem solving, attitudes and beliefs, and instruction. The "subjects" of these analyses have ordinarily been students in school but have also included young children and infants as well as school graduates.

How is Educational Psychology at Michigan State University unique?
Traditionally, educational psychology has focused on applying psychological methods and paradigms to the traditional problems and content listed above. Michigan State's program is more ambitious. Although our faculty conducts research in the traditional areas of educational psychology, we also explore new areas through the methods from disciplines other than psychology, including sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. The best way to get to know our diversity is to visit each of our individual entries on this page.

Before you leave, we have another way of describing ourselves. Recently, we outlined four strands of scholarship that characterize our work collectively. We believe that they communicate the breadth, diversity, and uniqueness of our program.

Subject-Matter Learning, Understanding, and Assessment
Work in this strand continues the long tradition in educational psychology of conceptualizing and researching the learning of traditional school subjects, principally literacy, mathematics, and science. We also study teacher learning of subject-matter and the development and study of new technological tools for learning subject-matter.

Technology for Teaching and Learning
Work in this strand concerns the design and study of new tools and environments to support more effective thinking, learning, and communication. Examples include research on case-based learning environments, on the social and emotional aspects of computer interfaces, and on teachersÕ understanding and use of Web-based tools. Faculty are also working to conceptualize technology as another subject-matter to be learned.

Social, Cultural, and Organizational Contexts and Processes in Learning
Work in this strand draws on psychological, sociological, and anthropological perspectives to explore learning and education as phenomena that are not reducible to individual thinking and experience. The contexts and processes of learning and education are seen broadly, as encompassing the person in relation to other persons, schools, families, workplaces, communities, socioeconomic structures, and cultures. This strand expands the scope of traditional work in educational psychology beyond the confines of classrooms and schools.

Development in Context
Many aspects of educationally-relevant experience change over relatively long periods of time in ways that deeply influence learning but are not reducible to it. Such developmental phenomena include motivation, identity, and critical transitions. Work in this strand takes a life-span perspective.