Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

32 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
the most important positions may be the ones with which mainstream educational psychology
is the most unfamiliar. Employing these knowledges postformalism provides a way out, an escape
from the ideological blinders of the mechanistic worldview.
Postformalism and the Basis for a Political Educational Psychology
In a hegemonized and colonized educational system the role of educational psychology becomes
even more important than it has been—and it has historically played a central role in
shaping educational policy and practice. Postformalism is deeply concerned with exposing the
importance of mechanistic educational psychology and its real life consequences. As Ellen Essick
points out in her chapter, “Gender and Educational Psychology,” women are regulated via the
“performance of femininity.” Essick’s powerful argument helps readers understand the way these
politics of gender shape and are shaped by educational psychology. Taking a cue from Essick,
postformalists call for a political educational psychology that studies not only the performance of
femininity but also power-shaped performances in the domains of race, class, ethnicity, sexuality,
etc.
Erica Burman’s powerful chapter on the gendering of childhood extends these power and gender
themes, as it traces the way they inform even the way we theorize the development of children.
(In this context take a look at Nicole Green’s fascinating account of the problems of mechanistic
developmentalism in “Homeschooling: Challenging Traditional Views of Public Education.”) In
Burman’s analysis of developmentalism, the child manifests cognitive development by embracing
a masculine rationalistic gender model. In this same manner mechanistic descriptions of higher
order thinking have privileged a cultural masculinity. Power operates not only in these ways in
ed psych but is connected to all dimensions of the domain. Every theory, every research method,
every interpretive construct in the field is a contested concept that is intimately connected to
issues of power. How psychologists and their discipline is historically and socially situated is
a dynamic of power—moreover, the way we interpret this situatedness is affected by power.
(See Rochelle Brock and Joe Kincheloe’s chapter on the politics of educational psychology,
“Educational Psychology in a New Paradigm: Learning a Democratic Way of Teaching.”)
In his chapter, “Reclaiming Critical Thinking as Ideology Critique,” Stephen Brookfield argues
in the spirit of critical theorist Herbert Marcuse that “the struggle to think conceptually is always a
political struggle.” He follows this notion with the assertion—central to postformalism’s notion of
a political educational psychology—that “political action and cognitive movement are partners ...
in the development of a revolutionary consciousness.” In this spirit postformalists reassert the
inseparability of the political and the psychological. How we teach individuals to think in a
rigorous manner is highly political. What we teach them to think about is infused with politics.
There is no way to escape this power dynamic, no matter how hard many mechanists say they
have tried.
When we construct a curriculum, power is involved. When we evaluate student performance,
power is involved. When we embrace certain educational goals and reject others, power is
involved. Some educational psychologists suggest that intelligence involves knowing your way
around. Postformalists ask: where is it that we want to know our way around and what is it we
want to do after we know our way around. Both of these questions are both constructed by and
answered in relation to issues of power. As critical interpretivists have taught us, cognition does
not take place in a vacuum. Do we work to get to know our way around the country club so we
can cultivate business contacts and improve our personal socioeconomic status? Or do we get
to know our way around the political structures of the city so we can work to help individuals
struggling to survive the poverty they face daily?
A political educational psychology asks and answers these types of questions. Francisco Varela
asks in this political psychological context: how can compassionate concern be fostered in an