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Luella Cole, Sidney Pressey, and Educational Psychoanalysis, 1921–1931

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Extract

Trends in the Psychological Index indicated a change in resources directed toward education between the early 1910s and late 1920s. By 1930, “educational” studies accounted for the highest percentage—about 25 percent—of 25, 472 articles in psychology, with studies in “abnormal” and “social” psychology accounting for respectively 21 percent and 19 percent. This trend, evident in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature as well, reflected an increasing popularity of psychotherapeutic knowledge and products in clinics, courts, hospitals, prisons, and schools. As a growth market, education offered resources and was viewed as the most promising institution in the United States for regulating normality. By the late 1910s, “educational psychology” was central to institutions of teacher training. Certainly, for psychologists, psychology was the “the source of fundamental assumptions” for guiding educational practice. Teachers' views were similar. In one survey in the mid 1920s, teachers recognized educational psychology as the most intrinsically valuable course in their university programs. In other words, within institutions like The Ohio State University (OSU), requirements in teacher training provided psychologists with a mechanism for demonstrating the uses of psychotherapeutic knowledge, products, and procedures. These trends beg a simple question: What was educational psychology?

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Copyright © 2004 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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