“Each mind has its own
method”
Emerson, 1841
“In a world as empirical as ours, a
youngster who does not know what he is good at will not be sure
what he is good for”
Fridenberg, 1959
There is only one unequivocal law of human
behavior—the law of individual differences.
People are more different than they are alike, and there is
probably no environment that elicits individual differences sooner
in life than formal education.
Individual differences in academically related
characteristics can make for success or failure in one of life's
most important pursuits—obtaining an education. As a
result, a primary focus of applied educational psychologists has
been the identification of methods that allow each individual to
achieve their maximum educational performance. Unfortunately,
after a century of applied research on the identification of
student characteristics and learning environments, “a
coherent and parsimonious theory of performance is still
lacking” (Corno, Cronbach, Kupermintz, Lohman, Mandinach,
Porteus & Talbert, 2002).
In education, teachers strive to arrange
conditions that elicit optimal performance in all students.
However, the optimal learning conditions and techniques for one
student may not facilitate the best performance in another
student. According to Corno et al. (2002), each individual
“has worked out over many years how to respond in her own way
to symbol systems and social cues. Each has aptitude for particular
situations. Recognizing specifically the qualities each person
brings to a situation, then adjusting the situation to improve the
fit—these are major tasks of those who work with
people” (p. 1). Fortunately, “theoretical and
technical advances in research on learning and effective schooling,
particularly those which have occurred during the past decade, have
greatly influenced the nature and type of information on individual
differences that has been considered instructional planning and
educational placement of learners with special needs” (Wang,
1987, p. 3)
