**2. Transitions of educational psychology from simplicity to complexity**

It is possible to establish that its birth and development is mainly generated in the twentieth century, spite the identification of a varied range of European precursors such as North Americans [1] in the previous centuries. The birth and consolidation of this discipline, found between the years 1900 and 1920, is sustained and guided by ideologies and conceptual frameworks linked to the behavioral and functionalist perspective of psychology [1, 2], that will print an unmistakable seal of scientificity, evaluation and intervention of the medium to guide such behavior. This seal will be maintained throughout the twentieth century as part

These perspectives of psychology and their cognitivist derivation (cognitive behavioral psychology) were developed on the basis of the conception of the world and the human being of the paradigm of simplicity, which aims to value objectivity, control and reduction of variables [3, 4]. Even though other psychological views populated the twentieth century (psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology, transpersonal or systemic psychology, etc.), they have not had the same impact on educational psychology, as well as on education as a socio-cultural phenomenon, perhaps due to the fact that they search exactly the opposite, that is, the integrity, the

With a discipline inspired by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and materialized in the twentieth century, I think it is fair, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, to establish a reflexive, innovative and transformative review of the educational psychology. This is necessary because even with the great amount of knowledge and expertise that has accumulated, educational psychology has not significantly impacted the educational process or contributed

What kind of educational psychology does the twenty-first century need? This is a great ques-

In this chapter we propose a resignification of the work of the educational psychologist in order to establish a complex and non-simplistic discipline that allows facing the essential tensions and dilemmas that have never been clarified [6] such as: what is the identity of educational psychology, and what is the purpose in the generation of knowledge. This desirable horizon, educational psychology from the complexity, requires a crucial tool: the availability of critical thinking. The nature of a professional is to use criticality to generate change, both of themselves as a professional and as a person, as well as of the educational community in

The critical concept has different acceptations, on the one hand, it is seen as something decisive or of priority, which must be resolved in a timely manner, and on the other hand, as the constant evaluation of an idea or situation (definition from the Royal Spanish Academy or RAE in Spanish) [7]. In this way, and from a superficial synthesis of these acceptations, critical thinking is a tool that would allow facing relevant situations of the person or the community through questioning and reflection, in order to achieve a change in said situation, and therefore, should be the strategy that allows the work of educational psychologists to promote change as a part of the sociocultural interaction in the educational community, a focus that

to the sociocultural change that is required in these times to learn and teach [5].

subjectivity, the emotional; in other words, the complexity.

tion to answer. However, little has been done about it [6].

of the professional role.

8 Educational Psychology - Between Certitudes and Uncertainties

which they are located.

César Coll was already pointing out in 2001.

Munné [8] has pointed out that the discussion of simplicity and complexity is linked to the search for knowledge, which relates this discussion with an ontological and epistemological analysis with which human beings have explained reality. The preceding is due to the fact that it is a search for knowledge that has guided the development of scientific and professional disciplines. The way in which this search has been based has been to a great extent, although not in a single dimension, on the rationality and reductionism that are characteristics of the traditional and positivist scientific outlook. This has allowed the capturing and understanding of reality in a sequential and orderly manner, and with basic processes of cognition that promote the processing of information in an expeditious and efficient manner, in order to achieve clear, measurable and unambiguous knowledge.

This perspective is oriented by the human need of seeing this reality as something ordered, perfect and harmonious [4, 8], where even the knowledge of the people and the educational theory should also be equally ordered, structured, and specified in stereotyped actions, with a hierarchical, clear and objective management, that leaves out the problems and noises that arise in the educational level (such as learning difficulties, school demotivation, violence and power) as they cannot be explained nor adequately controlled [4, 9].

According to the perspective of the simplistic paradigm, psychology as a scientific discipline (as well as the traditional educational psychology) would fit greatly in that model, as it would present characteristics that are focused on individual attention (preferably), on the assessment of technical knowledge, in the functionality of a pathology, in the standardization of behaviors to behavioral standards (norms), and in the hierarchical relation between the fields of knowledge [6].

Even the history of educational psychology has been influenced by the characteristics of simplicity, as its birth and consolidation seemed to have responded more to pragmatic-conceptual determinations, such as the adherence to the behavioral theory of the 1920s and 1930s, rather than an academic reflection [6]. This adoption of the scientific position (uncritical and amoral), has established a reductionist approach that is focused on the teaching and learning process as a central object of educational psychology [1].

It is necessary to properly recognize the contribution of a scientific view of simplicity that has allowed the conceptual and empirical field of psychology to develop as a serious and respectable discipline, thus, producing the same result in educational psychology. However, nowadays this view has been imposed as the only acceptable paradigm for the development of knowledge and professional performance, generating difficulties in the theoretical, paradigmatic and even technical evolution that this discipline presents in its link with the educational process, which results in an inability to provide adequate answers for the challenges that arise [10].

Therefore, it is necessary to direct our practices toward the development of a perspective centered on complexity, as it is part of our everyday reality, and can give an account of our most human characteristics, the solidary interconnection of the phenomena, and the uncertainty and the contradiction [3]. Its nature is holistic and evolutionary, in constant transformation, and includes the subject as an integral part of the construction of change. It sees knowledge as a multidimensional aspect, integrated by diverse approaches, which allow the integration of diversity, error, interculturality, emotionality and uncertainty [11].

result of cultural valuation, being an ideal that combines the main values of social constructionism, in clear opposition to the reductionism and disciplinary focus that has been gener-

A Critical Role of the Psychologist: A Way to Achieve Complexity in Educational Psychology

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80509

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The critical perspective is a position in the search for knowledge that allows us to reveal other different perspectives, which opens our understanding toward interpretations different from those given to us by tradition. Critical psychology has its roots in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, with thinkers such as Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, or Habermas [14].

In this view the acceptance of the world as it is was rejected, with its inequalities and injustices, and with the domination of classes, indicating that reality is not determined by natural reasons, but by historical and particular reasons that lead to a certain order [15]. Some of the most significant, worldwide known, authors of this perspective are Michel Foucault and Paulo Freire. Foucault is mainly known for the redefinition of concepts such as power, knowledge and discourse, as power is not exercised only with sovereignty or laws, nor with weapons or force, but with knowledge. In this sense, knowledge refers to all our opinions and knowledge about reality, to our convictions about basic facts of daily life, as well as to the value parameters we give to such events, good and evil, what is normal, and right or wrong,

Freire rescues the human sphere in a more social sense, politically committed with education, and argues that the traditional powers as well as authority impose an inequitable system in which the poor are deprived of their opportunity to participate and change the schemes that maintain said inequity. In addition, he advocates an education that breaks the culture of silence and generates awareness in the oppressed of the cultural and economic causes of their situation, that is, to free the human being through the awareness of their reality and their potential. For this purpose, education must be changed, because this is one of the great mechanisms that reproduce the established order and domesticates individuals in those reali-

Critical psychology does not act only on dominant theories, it also deals with methods, and its central task is to face the values and practices of psychology that do not review or question the forms of oppression that could be being transmitted or reproduced by them. The questioning, through critical judgment, of the different ways of exercising power, as well as its explicit and implicit manifestations in psychological practice and in daily life, are subject of critical studies, due to the fact that they can be presented as natural ways of being of some situations not

Criticism as a reflective activity, in a kind of thinking that allows us to analyze the level of foundation of an information or idea, based both on reflection itself and on the reflection of others [16, 17]. In this way, psychology has been developed into two flows, on one hand, from social critical psychology, that is, a more theoretical approach that questions the processes

discussed or, in some cases, argued as the only appropriate form of social existence.

ated in some fields of knowledge that are born from the simplistic view.

whether that is to an individual or social organization level.

ties that do not allow them to evolve as human beings [15].

**psychology**

**3. Critical thinking as a strategy for the evolution of educational** 

This paradigm is characterized by a transdisciplinary conception of knowledge and praxis, which is achieved through an intricate conformation that must modify itself and, at the same time, modify the subjects that integrate its action, in a constant and participatory manner. In particular, it would allow the generation of a complex, dynamic and non-linear methodology that centrally deals with variability. This paradigm should be endowed with characteristics that are simultaneously so general as to explain phenomena in a vast variety of human situations, which is what science requires, and, at the same time, be able to accept specificities that rescue individuality and subjective contextualization [12].

Thus, in educational psychology, a view that comes from this paradigm is needed to a great extent, due to the fact that education is, precisely, one of the eminently complex areas of human interaction that requires balancing community needs such as discipline, coexistence and the curriculum, with individual needs, motivation and learning demand.

It would imply constructing from psychoeducational knowledge, with awareness, participation and meaning, aiming for a change and allowing it to change us, that is, with a tension between the technical and the critical versus knowledge and practice. In other words, generating knowledge, tools and techniques from theoretical and empirical bases as it has traditionally been done, but reflecting and modifying said elements from experience and interdisciplinary collaboration [6].

The preceding would also imply understanding and valuing the teaching-learning process as a tension between stability and change, given the need to transmit knowledge (what we call recurrence), in order to maintain the culture and, at the same time, to generate new knowledge, to produce what should lead us to change and transformation. In addition, it implies the establishment of a tension between the expertise, with all the knowledge and power that it can grant a person, and the inexperience, with all its ingenuity and dependence, while also valuing the social interaction and feedback that we generate with the other members of the educational community [13]. Finally, it would involve promoting the tension between the construction of knowledge, the techniques and professional identity, and the construction of knowledge based on the expert and inexperienced collaboration of the views, professional and non-professional, of those who share the educational framework.

To achieve this perspective from the complexity, it is of great importance to discuss the tensions of the discipline, as it is through reflection and dialog that we define the limits of knowledge and its adaptation to everyday reality. This does not involve leaving out research and disciplinary conceptualization, but establishing a balance between the latter and the social and cultural reality.

Through this, it would be possible to channel one of the greatest challenges promoted by the perspective of complexity, that is, transdisciplinarity [3]. This concept has been recently developed, due to the evolution that disciplinary groups have experienced in research, as a result of cultural valuation, being an ideal that combines the main values of social constructionism, in clear opposition to the reductionism and disciplinary focus that has been generated in some fields of knowledge that are born from the simplistic view.
