Psychological Theory and Educational Reform
How School Remakes Mind and Society

This book provides theoretical account of the reason behind the failure of most educational reform.

David R. Olson (Author)

9780521532112, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 June 2003

358 pages, 5 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.4 cm, 0.489 kg

'David Olson's Psychological Theory and Educational Reform is a masterpiece.' Teachers College Record

For well over a century educational reformers have looked for a breakthrough in the sciences of psychology and pedagogy that would dramatically improve the effectiveness of schooling. This book shows why such an ambition is an illusion. Schools are institutions which attempt to balance the needs of a bureaucratic society that funds them with the personal goals, interests, hopes and ambitions of the students who enroll in them. Reform efforts attempt to realign that balance without any clear conception of how the two are related. This book offers a theoretical account of the relation between the minds of learners and the institutional structure of the school that would account both for the ways that schooling remakes minds and societies and why such institutions are resistant to change.

Part I. The Discourse of Education: 1. The discourse of education
2. Educational theory and educational reform
Part II. Schools as Institutions: 3. Rediscovering institutions
4. School as a bureaucratic institution
5. Institutionalized knowledge and personal belief
6. Science and schooling as documentary practices
7. The Psychology of persons in institutions
Part III. Schools as Pedagogical Environments: 8. The rediscovery of the mind
9. Understanding and the growth of knowledge
10. Some preliminaries to the history of schooling
11. Some preliminaries to the history of pedagogy
12. Pedagogy as a bridge from the subjective to the normative
Part IV. Prospects for the Study and Reform of Education: 13. Responsibilities for teaching and learning
14. The achievement and assessment of virtue
15. A framework for educational theory
16. Coda: psychological theory and educational reform.

Subject Areas: Educational psychology [JNC], Education [JN], Child & developmental psychology [JMC]