Educational Psychology: Focus on Psychology of Learning and Learning Styles to Enhance Academic Performance of Learners

Abstract

This paper highlighted the concept of educational psychology. It also explained implications of the knowledge of educational psychology in the teaching and learning process. Some of these implications among others include, knowing the personality of the learners, their potentials, abilities and weaknesses. It is meant to expose educators, teachers and educational administrators to be more skillful in the planning of curriculum, syllabuses, and stages of development of learners and how various new knowledge can be implemented. It explained how teachers should take cognizance of respective instructional materials to be used and when to use them. Furthermore, this paper elucidated the psychology of learning. The research literature embarked upon by various psychologists have been analyzed and how each of them propounded their theories in the psychology of learning. Examples of psychologists such as Pavlov, Thorndike, and Skinner, their work on Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning were thoroughly highlighted.  The paper particularly addressed how cognitive styles of individual learner can make impact on academic performance, most especially, their dispositions of perceiving, remembering, organizing, processing, thinking and problem-solving. Conclusion and recommendations such as the use of various methodologies and instructional materials in the teaching and learning processes were drawn so as to impact on academic performance.