Doctoral Program Overview
The Educational Psychology specialization/track at Indiana University is a concentration that leads to a PhD in Learning and Developmental Sciences. The program offers work concentrating on learning and development across the life span and both inside and outside of the classroom.
In the Educational Psychology sprecialization/track students can focus on either the learner and the processes of acquiring, storing, and accessing knowledge, or on the conditions of learning, instruction and their relation to learner outcomes. In addition, the learner can study how development affects learning, leading to research that contributes to the understanding of human behavior while addressing the practical concerns of educators, parents, and others interested in the developing learner both inside and outside the classroom. Our faculty are guided in these endeavors by the following objectives:
- To give students a strong grounding in concepts, theories and empirical studies of individuals' biological, cognitive, social, and emotional development across the life span.
- To give students a strong understanding in how learning occurs and the different theories about learning.
- To help students build an expertise in one or more specific aspects of educational psychology.
- To involve students in faculty-guided and independent research experiences that promote the development of strong research skills.
- To help students attain other experiences (e.g., teaching, program development) that help them meet their particular career objectives.
- To allow flexibility in course work and other program requirements in order to meet the specific needs and interests of individual students.
- To help students place their specific interests within the larger contexts of the educational psychology field, with an emphasis on implications of developmental processes for learning, educational programs, and practice.
Within the larger Learning and Developmental Sciences degree, seven faculty specialize in Educational Psychology. Faculty areas of research include: child, adolescent, and adult development; cognitive and social development, creativity, individual differences in learning rates (i.e., gifted learners), classroom applications of learning theories, and the interacting effects of child, home, and school variables. Some of our research programs focus on basic processes of development, (such as family processes, parenting, scaffolding, peers, social status; social networks, the development of aggression, violence, emotional and academic self-regulation, play interests, expertise, metacognition, creativity, children’s thinking, gerontology, physical activity and aging, and creativity and aging). Faculty also focus on applied programs of research such as child care and development, family/school connections, learning in the classroom, adolescent deviancy and risky behaviors, and geriatric education for health care professionals. A wide range of research methods are used by faculty and included as part of the training program, including laboratory based experimental studies, naturalistic studies in homes and schools, and secondary data analysis of large data sets.
We limit the number of doctoral students entering the Educational Psychology program to typically 4 - 6 students each year in order to facilitate close mentoring relationships between faculty and students. Our department is firmly committed to mentoring and supporting ethnic minority graduate students. Our faculty recently have been awarded mentoring and teaching awards. Students are assigned an advisor with similar research interests when they begin the program but are free to switch advisors as interests change. All new doctoral students have the opportunity to become familiar with faculty in the department in an introductory course their first semester, Theory and Method in Educational Psychology (P526), in which members of the department present their research. This allows students to refine their own interests and begin the process of tailoring their course work and training to best realize their own professional and academic ambitions.
We encourage students in the program to begin their research program during their first year. A faculty member works individually with each student to develop the first step of the student’s research program, an early inquiry project, (similar to a master’s thesis). This first study provides the student with training in research design, methods, and analysis and should lead to a publication for the student.
In the later years of their program, students are given the opportunity to be instructors for undergraduate human development or educational psychology courses. In addition, the department supports the development of students’ teaching skills with a 2 year course, College Instruction (P650). This course aims to improve instruction among graduate student instructors by helping them to construct syllabi and lessons and by leading students in discussion of the theoretical and empirical literature regarding effective teaching and assessment practices at the college level. It also provides a forum for discussing issues which arise or may arise when teaching undergraduates.
Our students complete their Ph.D. and enter the job market with at least 2 years of teaching experience, presentations at national conferences such as the Society for Research in Child Development or American Educational Research Association, and typically have publications in refereed journals. They are competitive for a variety of positions in academic institutions, private or non-profit institutions such as research foundations, and government agencies. Our graduates are working as professors in educational psychology, human development and family studies, and psychology (for example, at Vanderbilt University, Auburn University, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte), directors of research (for example, at High Scope Foundation and the Alliance for School Choice), and for departments of education (for example, the Indiana State Department of Education).
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