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The Social Side of School: Why Teachers Need Social Psychology

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Abstract

Teaching and learning are fundamentally social enterprises. In attempting to understand, explain, and predict social behavior, social psychologists have amassed scores of empirically grounded, fundamental principles. Yet, many such principles have yet to be applied to classrooms despite the social nature of these settings. This article illustrates how infusing novel concepts from social psychology into teachers’ repertoires holds untapped potential to improve their pedagogy, ability to motivate students, and capacity to enrich students’ understanding of subject matter. This article first examines three domains of social psychology—social cognition, influence/persuasion, and interpersonal relations—and illustrates how applications of principles from each domain could benefit classrooms. Next, two exemplars are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of past interventions that are rooted in social psychological principles. Finally, pathways through which teacher educators can introduce new social psychological concepts and applications to teachers are explored.

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Maureen Brinkworth, Jere Brophy, Kristy Cooper, and Hahrie Han whose incisive comments improved this manuscript tremendously.

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  1. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Hunter Gehlbach

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  1. Hunter Gehlbach
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Correspondence to Hunter Gehlbach.

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Gehlbach, H. The Social Side of School: Why Teachers Need Social Psychology. Educ Psychol Rev 22, 349–362 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-010-9138-3

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