The comparative psychology of school subjects

Had the Handbook of Educational Psychology been published in 1980, it is unlikely that a section on the curriculum and knowledge, or on the psychology of school subject matters, would have been included. Educational psychology has had an on-again, off-again relationship with subject matter during the past century. At one time, it might have been predicted that school subjects would form the central framework for organizing educational psychology. At other times, subject matters faded into obscurity as relevant dimensions of the discipline of educational psychology, to be replaced by a concern for general mental, developmental, and emotional processes. This chapter reviews the history of the psychology of school subjects from its prominence during the first two decades of the 20th century, when it served to define the essential character of educational psychology, through its extended periods of obscurity during the decades when psychologists sought general theories of learning, teaching, and problem solving, and into the more recent period when the psychology of school subjects appears to be undergoing a renaissance, but in forms not foreseeable during its earlier incarnation. The discussion frequently returns to a set of interlocking questions: What does it mean to know a school subject' In what ways have disciplines been transformed into school subjects? How have psychologists studied the processes of learning and knowing such subjects? What kinds of connection can be made between what it means to know a school subject and how to teach and learn the subject?