Critical Educational Psychology

Stephen Vassallo's book is written for reflexive classroom teachers wanting to change the way they educate. It adeptly shows how psychology can be reconsidered to advance teaching and learning. A vital contribution to the field of educational psychology. -- Tim Corcoran, Deakin University of Australia, author of Psychology in Education: Critical Theory~Practice If you believe that what psychologists know about education is equivalent to what physicists know about gravity, Critical Educational Psychology is not for you. However, if, like many of us, you are uncertain, even confused, about what we know about student learning and motivation, the teaching of creativity and critical thinking, educational assessment, and classroom management, Vassallo's book will reward your attention. -- Jack Martin, Simon Fraser University, coauthor of The Education of Selves: How Psychology Transformed Students Stephen Vassallo brings together several important critical directions in contemporary thought and weaves these into a coherent framework for analyzing educational practice beyond the narrow confines of what a successful, achieving student can be in our neoliberal era of performance management. The book asks new questions about the ways teachers support students in learning, thinking, being motivated, developing and paying attention. It also asks new questions about ways educators can engage critically with the relentless effort of measuring, assessing and managing students. Critical Educational Psychology exhibits an impressive grasp of the field of educational psychology while at the same time putting it into a larger context of changing views and goals of education across time. This gives educators, administrators, and policy-makers the tools needed to use psychological approaches with discernment, beyond a cookbook approach towards creative, collaborative, and ethically engaged teaching practice. Seeing the way larger discourses in the economy and social life affect education provides much-needed inspiration about the possibilities of transformation in a time of global social upheaval. -- Lise Bird Claiborne, University of Waikato Vassallo has written a comprehensive critical engagement with educational psychology formulated from within, that reviews its key concerns and frameworks to show their limitations without rejecting either the theories or the practices they inspire. It offers students and practitioners not only a scholarly and clear analysis but also ways of applying those critical arguments as tools to change practice. This book is a rare and important contribution. -- Erica Burman, Manchester Institute of Education As the nascent discipline of critical educational psychology takes shape, Stephen Vassallo's book is sure to be an important moment in its intellectual history. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the author casts a critical eye over a standard fare of topics in contemporary educational psychology-self-regulated learning, motivation, attention, higher order thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, developmentally appropriate practice, classroom management, and assessment. But make no mistake. Vassallo's critical approach comprises neither pedestrian appraisals of validity and reliability of empirical studies that typify mainstream psychological critique, nor the kind of facile inadequately informed drive-by criticism of psychology one often hears in educational circles. Vassallo's examination is au courant, penetrating philosophically and conceptually, and goes to the heart of problematic ontological, epistemological, and ideological assumptions on which educational psychology is flourishing. The book will be a fascinating read and of great value to those seeking a more sophisticated critical understanding of the discipline of educational psychology, the ideas it is popularizing, their effects and consequences, and the aspirations of its practitioners. -- Jeff Sugarman, Simon Fraser University

This book will enhance teachers' ethical decision-making and start important new conversations about power and opportunity.The field of critical studies recognizes that all knowledge is deeply embedded in ideological, cultural, political, and historical contexts. Although this approach is commonly applied in other subfields of psychology, educational psychology-which is the study of human learning, thinking, and behavior in formal and informal educational contexts-has resisted a comprehensive critical appraisal. In Critical Educational Psychology, Stephen Vassallo seeks to correct this deficit by demonstrating how the psychology of learning is neither neutral nor value-free but rather bound by a host of contextual issues and assumptions. Vassallo invites teachers and teacher educators, educational researchers, and educational psychologists to think broadly about the implications that their use of psychology has on the teaching and learning process. He applies a wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches to examine the psychology of learning, cognitive development, motivation, creativity, discipline, and attention. Drawing on multiple perspectives within psychology and critical theory, he reveals that contemporary educational psychology is entangled in and underpinned by specific political, ideological, historical, and cultural contexts. A valuable resource for anyone who relies on psychology to interact with, assess, and deliberate over others, especially school-aged children, Critical Educational Psychology resists neatly packaged theories, models, and perspectives that are intended to bring some basis and certainty to pedagogical decision-making. This book will enhance teachers' ethical decision-making and start important new conversations about power and opportunity.