While educational psychology is normally assumed to contribute scientific, research-based ideas to a better understanding of teaching/learning environments, its concepts can be alternatively considered as products of particular socio-historical contexts whose contemporary application may be neither politically neutral nor pedagogically advantageous. This argument is examined with particular reference to psychology in education policy in Barbados over the past decade, which is expected to transform the society through transforming schools.

What is authoritarianism? The authors of the original research were concerned with the problem of discovering whether there is a type of personality which is predisposed to Fascism and ethnic prejudice, and by implication, a personality of what they describe as generally anti-democratic tendency.