Department of Educational Psychology and Foundations of Education

The department has been working towards strengthening psychological bases of school education and teacher education since its inception. Providing psychological knowledge and perspectives to educational theory and practice through research, development, training and extension programmes in guidance and counselling, education for peace and values, and educational psychology has been its major focus.

Thrust areas of the Department

A. Educational Psychology : The department also extends its resources and collaborates in providing psychological perspectives to different aspects of school education, such as curriculum planning, textbook writing, teacher training, assessment, etc. The department has also been engaged in bringing out Psychology textbooks for the higher secondary stage. It has also initiated work to promote awareness among students, parents, teachers and school administrators on the importance of studying Psychology at higher secondary level. Several other activities carried out by the department in this area are:-

• Organizing consultations, workshops for optimizing use of psychological knowledge in theory and practice.
• Conducting researches/interventions in different applied areas of educational psychology.
• Training teachers/teacher educators in psychological foundations of teacher education.
• Extending library services for use of researchers and professionals across the country.(Catalogue of Psychological Test)

B. Guidance and Counselling : Guidance and counselling, the applied area of educational psychology, has been a key concern in terms of research, development of resource materials, training of professionals, and capacity-building at the state level since the past five decades. To begin with, a full-time (nine months) Diploma Course was offered at the national level by the department. In 2002-03, the department initiated an International Diploma Course in Guidance and Counselling for Asian and African countries, which was later revised and is presently offered through distance/online mode in collaboration with Commonwealth of Learning (COL) since 2009-10. This course is conducted from the department at NIE as well as at the five study centres at the RIEs of Ajmer, Bhopal, Mysore, Bhubaneswar and Shillong. Other functions of the department in this area are as follows: -

• Capacity building of guidance personnel at state level.
• Developing materials - print, audio and video for training in guidance and counselling.
• Maintaining database of NGOs/Organizations/State departments for implementing guidance and counseling programmes/ services.
• Conducting status surveys/researches/ follow up studies.
• Strengthening of Guidance and Counselling Resource Centre for extension activities.
• Database of trained counsellors (2009-2013) | Directory of trained counsellors

C. Education for Peace : In the light of National Curriculum Framework - 2005, (Position Paper on education for Peace- Hindi English ) peace education has emerged as a significant area of concern. Since 2005, training courses (both 6 weeks and five days training programme) on peace education for in-service teachers and teacher-educators have been organised by the department to serve as resource persons, in implementing peace education in states. So far 252 teachers and teacher educators deputed by different State Education Departments across the country have been trained. 'Ways for Peace' a resource book for teacher has been recently published by NCERT. Education for Values in School-A Framework was developed by the department.

The Department is also conducting trainings in collaboration with SCERTs of different regions to build the capacity of state key personnel, teachers and teacher educators in Peace Education and help in networking of trained personnel.