Method is a way of research or a way of knowing reality. Each science has its own methods and systems of techniques and operations that are used in the study of any phenomena.
Methods of educational psychology are the same as in the related humanities. However, it must be said that experiment and observation are fundamental.
Observation is a deliberate, with a specific purpose and performed in the system, the perception of the external manifestation of human actions with subsequent analysis and explanation of behavior.
Experiment - systematic manipulation of one or more factors and registration of changes in the behavior of the object of study.
Conventionally, the methods of educational psychology can be divided into 2 groups: methods of organizing research and collecting information. The former include a longitudinal study, comparative and complex methods. Second, observationexperiment, questionnaire, testing, interview, clinical and standardized conversation.
Considering in more detail the methods of educational psychology, such as the collection of information, it should be said that testing is questions and tasks reduced to certain standards that have a certain scale of values. Tests are used to bring to some standard of individual differences. There are some requirements for this method of collecting information:
- age norm;
- objectivity;
- validity;
- reliability.
Tests as methods of developmental and educational psychology are represented by several types:
- achievement tests that diagnose the possession of knowledge, skills and abilities;
- intelligence tests that reveal mental potential;
- tests of creativity that study and evaluate creativity;
- criteria-oriented, which reveal the possession of ZUNs necessary and sufficient to perform certain professional or educational tasks;
- personal - measurement of various aspects of the personality;
- projective methods - those that study personality, based on the psychological interpretation of the results of the projection;
- scaling is a method of modeling real-life processes using systems of numbers and coordinates.
The subject and methods of educational psychology differ from psychological ones only in that they studylaws of upbringing and education, using for this purpose the categorical and instrumental apparatus of other, related sciences. Two groups of methods are added, since they have a significant impact on the development of the child: these are psychological counseling and psychological correction.
The form of consultation can be both individual and group; the client is the child or his legal representatives. Correctional and developmental classes are also held in various forms, if we are talking about a preschool child, then a game is chosen in which he learns new skills.
In working with children, such methods of educational psychology as the study of products of activity are used - we are talking about checking essays and tests to find out how much the studied material was mastered, a questionnaire that reveals the motives of the teaching.
