Knowledge of sociology and psychology of education is import

So, what exactly is the meaning of educational psychology? Seifert says,

“It is the study of how learning occurs and of how teaching may help it occur. It includes knowledge about the characteristics or development of learners, about the conditions that promote better learning, about how to accommodate the needs of students with diverse abilities and backgrounds and about how to evaluate learning.” (1991, p.5)

Basically it is the study of the development of each individual in the educational settings. The sociology of education, according to Reid could be defined as,

“It approaches education at a level of abstraction which is essentially concerned with the social institutions of education, from peer groups through classes and schools to the system of education, with institutional composition, structures, procedures, ideologies and functioning (workings and outcomes) and with inter-relationships between education and other institutions.” (1986, p.23)

Similarly, Nash (1973) also finds that, “some teachers thought, quite wrongly, that less able and attractive children were from poor homes.” (Reid, 1986, p. 164). The sociology of education also highlights the teachers’ prejudice against certain ethnic minority groups and preference to the male students. This can be seen in our Malaysian schools too, where teachers may prefer certain races of students, for example, a teacher may think a Chinese male student as more intelligent than an Iban male student. Therefore, sociology of education actually helps to change the thought or prejudices of the teachers towards the less-advantaged students, eliminates stereotyping of students and favouritism on certain students and at the same time, gets to know how the home environment will affect their students.

“All stage theories assume that children go through a fixed sequence of behaviours or skills during their development and that each stage incorporates skills from all of the preceding stages. Individuals vary only in how quickly they move through the stages, not in the sequencing itself.” (1986, p.10)

The sociology of education enables the teachers to explore the schools as social world and it has also certainly made contributions to the field of education. In sociology of education, the teachers will learn about the social stratification and education. It helps them to realise that even students in school are divided according to social class, gender and ethnic and how these three elements will affect their learning in school. For instance, it is known that students who come from poor families or lower-working class family have a lower motivation and aspiration in school and teachers tend to rank their students in order of merit-middle class, upper working class and lower working class. This can be proof by what Goodarce had found, he suggested that,

Thus, from the definitions, it is apparent that sociology of education is more concerned with ‘people’ and ‘society’ rather than seeing the students as individuals as in educational psychology.

With this, it shows that every student is different and has their own personality. Individual differences may have something to do with their interest and even intelligence or aptitude. Some students may be slower than their peers of the same age. Therefore, the teacher will need the knowledge to adjust his or her teaching to meet the requirement of these students. Psychology of education also helps t

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