Educational Psychology is one of the branches of applied psychology. It is an attempt to apply the knowledge of psychology to the field of education. The term ‘Educational Psychology’ consists of two words - Education and Psychology. Education is concerned with teaching, training, instruction where as psychology deals the behavior of man and animals.

According to Crow & Crow - “Educational psychology describes and explains the learning experiences of an individual from birth through old age.” Skinner defines it as: “Educational psychology is that branch of psychology which deals with
teaching and learning.”

Characteristics of Educational Psychology:-

1. Educational psychology is the application of psychological concepts to educative process.
2. It is combination of two disciplines - education and psychology to assist each other.
3. It is the result of interdisciplinary approach between education and psychology
4. It helps in making teaching - learning process more effective.
5. It provides the methods and techniques which can be used at different stages of growth and development
6. It helps in relating teaching activities to learning situations.
7. It brings out desirable change in behaviour of students.
8. It enables the teachers to understand the needs of students.
9. It makes teaching - learning more purposive.
10. It helps in understanding, predicting and directing to achieve the goals of life.

Nature of Educational Psychology:-

We can summaries the nature of Educational Psychology in the following way:

1. Educational psychology is an applied branch of psychology. By applying it, it tries to study the behaviour and experiences of the pupils.
2. Educational psychology limits it dealing with the behaviour of the pupil in relation to educational environment.
3. It gives the necessary knowledge and skill for giving education to the pupils in a satisfactory way.
4. It is not a normative science, as it is not concerned with the values of Education and does not concern with “What ought to be. It is an applied positive science.”
5. Educational Psychology is not a perfect science because it, the applied behavioural science cannot claim objectivity, exactness validity as claimed by natura! science or applied science. (Medicine, Engineering)
6. It employs scientific method and adopts scientific approach to study the behaviour of an individual in educational environment.

Scope of Educational Psycholoqy:

Educational psychology should limit itself within the four walls of the teaching - learning process and educational environment. Educational psychology covered five major areas:

1. Individual differences of learners
   1. Growth and development of children
   2. Personality, intelligence and creativity
   3. MentalHealth
   4. Except ional Children
   5. Needs and aspiration
2. Teaching - Learning process.
   1. Psychology teaching - learning process
   2. Relationship of teaching and learning
   3. Learning theories for teachers
   4. Concept of learning
   5. Factor effecting learning, transfer of learning
   6. Learning problem and guidance
   7. Role of a teacher in learning process
3. Measuring learning outcomes
   1. Concept of measurement and evaluation
   2. Method of measurement
   3. Measurement of individual difference
   4. Analysing data, using stat ist ical teaching
4. The teaching situation
   1. Environmental factor
   2. Learning situation
   3. Classroom climate
   4. Group dynamics techniques
   5. Evaluation technique, guidance and counselling
5. Evaluation of Learning Performance
   1. Use of statistical method
   2. conducting research on educational problems

Limitation:

Educational psychology provides the teacher information on certain problems regarding the development of children and his effectiveness will depend on his experience and approach towards educational problem. Education psychology deals with the behaviour of the child. It gives guidelines only. Its generalisat ion are not as exact as the generalisation of natural sciences.