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ALFRED NOBEL UNIVERSITY, DNIPROPETROVS’K

THE DEPARTMENT OF PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

O.B. TARNOPOLSKY

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY

The Notes of Lectures

for all Specialities with the English Language of Teaching

Dnipropetrovsk

2012

ББК:88.3:74.58

УДК:159.9:37.015.3

Tarnopolsky O.B. The Fundamentals of Psychology and Pedagogy: The Notes of Lectures.

Learning materials. ALFRED NOBEL UNIVERSITY, DNIPROPETROVS’K

. – Dnipropetrovsk. – 2012. – 31 p.

These learning materials compiled by Doctor of Pedagogy, Full Professor O.B. Tarnopolsky are the notes of lectures on the subject “The Fundamentals of Psychology”. The contents embrace nine basic themes that correspond to the mandatory minimum of the state educational standard on the discipline The Fundamentals of Psychology. The notes of lectures are compiled for students of tertiary educational institutions of the 3d-4^th levels of accreditation where this discipline is taught in English. These notes may also be of interest to those who want to study the subject by themselves.

Contents

Lecture 1. Psychology as a science and its subject, branches of psychology and its principal modern theories 4

Lecture 2. Psychology of thinking, consciousness and subconsciousness, psychological settings, psychology of creativity 12

Lecture 3. Psychology of memory, retention and forgetting 15

Lecture 4. Psychology of emotions and feelings, motivation 18

Lecture 5. Psychology of human activities and human learning, attention, perception and imagination 20

Lecture 6. Psychological laws of structuring one’s personal relationships with the environment and people around to attain one’s personal goals 23

Lecture 7. Pedagogy as a science and its subject, branches of pedagogy and its principal modern theories 25

Lecture 8. Principles of didactics 27

Lecture 9. Organizing one’s own learning to achieve the best results 28

Recommended textbooks 30

Lecture 1. Psychology as a science and its subject, branches of psychology and its principal modern theories

1. Psychology as a science and its subject

Psychology is a collection of academic, clinical and industrial disciplines concerned with the explanation and prediction of behaviour, thought-processes, emotions, motivations, relationships, potentials and pathologies.

The subject of psychology is the psyche of humans and animals including numerous subjective phenomena. With the help of some of them, such as senses and perception, attention and memory, imagination, thinking and speech, a human being learns about the world around him/her. That is why they are called cognitive processes that regulate human learning. Other processes regulate human being’s communication with other people, directly control his/her actions and activities. Those are the psychic properties and states of a person; they include needs, motives, aims, interests, will, feelings and emotions, inclinations and abilities, knowledge and consciousness. Besides that, psychology studies human communication and behaviour, their dependence on psychic phenomena and, on the other hand, the dependence of psychic phenomena on human communication and behaviour. This is only an incomplete list of what is included into the subject matter of psychology.

2. Branches of psychology

General psychology studies an individual distinguishing in him/her cognitive processes and personality. The fields of study in general psychology are shown in Fig.1.

General psychology

Psychology of cognitive processes

Psychology of personality

senses, perception, attention, memory, imagination, thinking, speech

emotions, abilities, motivation, temperament, character, will (will-power)

Fig. 1. General psychology, its branches and fields of study

Special branches of psychology include the following specific branches:

1. Genetic psychology studying the hereditary mechanisms of psyche and behaviour and their dependence on the genotype;

2. Differential psychology studying humans’ individual differences, the origins of those differences and the processes of their development;

3. Age psychology studying humans’ age differences and the changes taking place when passing from one age category to the other ones;

4. Social psychology studying human relationships and phenomena that appear in the process of human communication and interaction in different social groups;

5. Pedagogical psychology studying all psychic phenomena connected with teaching, learning and upbringing (education as a whole);

6. Medical and pathopsychology as well as psychotherapy studying all the deviations from the norm in human psyche and methods of preventing and treating those deviations;

7. Juridical (law) psychology studying adoption by humans (members of society) of legally correct norms and behaviours as well as methods of instilling such norms and behaviours in human beings in the process of education and upbringing;

8. Psychodiagnostics solving the tasks of children’s level of development evaluation and differentiation of those levels.

Besides those above, some specific branches of modern psychology can be named, such as:

Experimental Psychology, which focuses on basic and applied science;

Humanistic Psychology, which uses qualitative research rather than conventional statistical methods to investigate the subjective experience of human beings;

Counselling Psychology, which focuses on helping people overcome or better manage perceived limitations;

Industrial/Organizational Psychology, which applies psychological principles to people working in organizations.