EDST 121: Educational Outcomes in Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Perspectives

A great deal of thinking about the relationship between psychology and education asks what psychology can contribute to the improvement of education. For example, can psychology help to improve the way that we teach reading? Can it help to close the gap in achievement between particular groups? Do preschoolers have ideas or dispositions that help--or hinder--their progress in school? However, one can also ask about the effects of education on psychological processes. There is enormous cross-national and cross-cultural variation in the length and type of education that children receive. A major goal of this course is to help students understand the effects of such variation on the ways that people think--and feel. A secondary goal is to alert students to the ways in which those effects can be measured and to underline the contribution that different methods--experiments, large-scale surveys, and participant observation--can make to our understanding of such effects. The final goal is to underline how educational provision and its impact vary dramatically across the globe.