Teachers help students learn, develop, and realize their potential. To become successful in their craft, teachers need to learn how to establish high-quality relationships with their students, and they need to learn how to implement instructional strategies that promote students' learning, development, and potential. To prepare pre-service teachers for the profession, the study of educational psychology can help them to better understand their students and better understand their process of teaching. Such is the twofold purpose of Educational Psychology – to help pre-service teachers understand their future students better and to help them understand all aspects of the teaching-learning situation. The pursuit of these two purposes leads to the ultimate goal of this text – namely, to help pre-service teachers become increasingly able to promote student learning, development, and potential when it becomes their turn to step into the classroom and take full-time responsibility for their own classes.

Angela M. O'Donnell research explores the significance of peers in the learning process. She says that most people really learn what they want to know from asking other people. The ability to recognize and effectively use peers is especially important to those who feel they have few resources.