In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, two persons helped lay the foundation of modern education. Comenius, a Czech humanist, greatly influenced both educational and psycho-educational thought. He wrote texts that were based on a developmental theory and in them introduced the use of visual aids in instruction. Media and instructional research, a vital part of contemporary educational psychology, has its origins in the writing and textbook design of Comenius. 61) {{U}}He recommended that instruction start with the general and then move to the particular and that nothing in books be accepted unless checked by a demonstration to the senses.{{/U}} He taught that understanding, not memory, is the goal of instruction; that we learn best that which we have an opportunity to teach; and that parents have a role to play in the schooling of their children.
The contributions of one of our many ancestors often are overlooked, yet Juan Luis Vives wrote very much as a contemporary educational psychologist might in the first part of the 16^th century. 62) {{U}}He stated to teachers and others with educational responsibilities, such as those in government and commerce, that there should be an orderly presentation of the facts to be learned,{{/U}} and in this way he anticipated Herbart and the 19th-century psychologists. He noted that what is to be learned must be practiced, and in this way he anticipated Thorndike's Law of Exercise. He wrote on practical knowledge and the need to engage student interest, anticipating Dewey. 63) {{U}}He wrote about individual differences and about the need to adjust instruction for all students, and anticipated the work of educational and school psychologists in the area of special education.{{/U}} He discussed the schools's role in moral growth, anticipating the work of Dewey, Piaget, Kohlberg, and Gilligan. He wrote about learning being dependent on self-activity, a precursor to contemporary research on meta-cognition, where the ways in which the self monitors its own activties are studied. Finally, 64) {{U}}Vives anticipated both the contemporary motivational theorists who avoid social comparisons and those researchers who find the harmful elements of norm-referenced testing to outweigh their advantages,{{/U}} by writing about the need for students to be evaluated on the .basis of their own past accomplishments and not in comparison with other students. 65) {{U}}Thus, long before we claimed our professional identity, there were individuals thinking intelligently about what we would eventually call educational psychology, preparing the way for the scientific study of education.{{/U}}