Raising educational achievement: what can instructional psychology contribute?

In this chapter you will learn about various ways that educational psychologists have attempted to employ ‘instructional psychology’ (IP) to help raise educational attainments in schools, especially with pupils whom teachers have traditionally found to be the hardest to teach. We will begin by considering how the term ‘underachievement’ has been used and how educational psychologists have supported the employment of IP-based interventions to overcome it. The term IP refers to aspects of a young person’s learning environment, and particularly to actual teaching style and methods, such as the use of behavioural objectives, task analysis, direct instruction (DI), and precision teaching (PT) as they relate to the learning of core skills. Each of these approaches will be examined and the basic tenets illustrated by individual case examples. Finally, the results from larger-scale applications of IP aimed at lower-achieving children across a number of classrooms and schools will be explored, which highlight the potential for this type of IP to support achievement by supporting the attainments of all learners.