Crisis? The Intersection between education and mental health, Part 2
Part 2: The role of schools in child and adolescent mental health. This is part 2 of a summary of Are the kids alright? Examining the intersection between education and mental health. Part 1 and context can be found here. The role of schools in contributing to the ‘crisis’ Humphrey asserts that the transformation ofContinue reading Crisis? The Intersection between education and mental health, Part 2
Crisis? The Intersection between education and mental health, Part 1
Part 1: Is there a child and adolescent mental health crisis? Are we currently in the throws of a child and adolescent mental health crisis? If we are, is our current education system in some way to blame? These questions might seem simple enough, but when we dig a little deeper we find that anyContinue reading Crisis? The Intersection between education and mental health, Part 1
Personality Type and Intelligence
Is there a relationship between your personality type and how you score on an IQ test? The study of personality and intelligence share a number of important factors. The overriding one, perhaps, pertains to the sphere of behavioural genetics, the study of the heritability of human behaviour. What do we mean by heritability? The termContinue reading Personality Type and Intelligence
Is Conscientiousness all it’s cracked up to be?
Conscientiousness is a Big 5 trait associated with commitment and persistence, the skill of staying on track and battling through despite setbacks and minor hiccups. It shares many of its characteristics with other traits such as grit (indeed, many researchers see grit as simply conscientiousness repackaged). Persistence is a trait in its own right andContinue reading Is Conscientiousness all it’s cracked up to be?
Behaviour, Causality and Social Cognition.
A recent Twitter poll asked the following question: If a student behaves with one teacher and not another, it means they’re choosing when they behave.” (Interpret as you want & comment if you want to expand) I was interested in how the question implied that participants should consider the causality of behaviour, that is,Continue reading Behaviour, Causality and Social Cognition.
Are you paying attention?
This is the first part of planned series on attention and its relationship to other cognitive processes. Many years ago I recall sitting in a room at Durham University, headphones piping into my brain words I can no longer recall. As the words were uttered I was repeating them out loud, as I had beenContinue reading Are you paying attention?
Make It Personal: The Self-reference Effect
An oft-heard suggestion in teaching is that making information relevant to pupils results in better learning of the material. For example, in a lesson about the conditions in the trenches during the First World War, we might ask pupils to imagine what it would be like. Some teachers might even extend this and set aContinue reading Make It Personal: The Self-reference Effect
Why Goals Matter
I’ve discussed goals in the past, from the relationship between goals and emotions to the use of incremental goals (or personal bests). What I haven’t really discussed are the nut and bolts of goals, such as how we choose them and go about tackling them. Hopefully, I’ll be able to clarify some of these pointsContinue reading Why Goals Matter
Positive Psychology: Past, Present and Future
Positive Psychology essentially deals with human happiness. It’s a movement that grew out of Martin Seligman’s 1998 presidential address to the American Psychological Association. Seligman, a world-renowned psychologist who was instrumental in the discovery of learned helplessness, suggested that psychology needed to shift its emphasis from the negative aspects of the human condition to areasContinue reading Positive Psychology: Past, Present and Future
What do we mean by wellbeing?
We use the term a great deal. I used it countless times when I was writing The Emotional Learner without ever feeling the need to define the term. Wellbeing is sometimes used to mean happiness, or perhaps contentment; it’s often used when people speak about mental illness, suggesting that we can view it in termsContinue reading What do we mean by wellbeing?
Making Memories
How does our brain go about making memories? And where are such memories kept for later retrieval?
Five Principles of Academic Buoyancy
1. What is Academic Buoyancy? Academic buoyancy is the ability to successfully deal with academic setbacks and challenges that are typical of the ordinary course of school life (e.g. poor grades, competing deadlines, exam pressure, difficult schoolwork)
5 Psychology Reads
Five psychology books I have enjoyed. There are many others, of course, and this list is in no particular order.
What (if anything) can teachers learn from neuroscience?
I’m sceptical of headlines that claim neuroscientists might have discovered the mechanisms that lead to bad behaviour, why teenagers are heavily influenced by their peers or why rewards don’t always work with adolescents. Such reports are usually accompanied by a stock photograph of a brain or diagram of a synapse and often dismissed outright byContinue reading What (if anything) can teachers learn from neuroscience?
Nurturing habits in ourselves and others
Habits have been defined as learned dispositions to repeat past responses (Wood and Neal, 2007). In other words, a habit is a behaviour we repeat because we associate it with a specific outcome. That said, habits can lead to both positive and negative outcomes and we often carry them out without awareness, especially if theContinue reading Nurturing habits in ourselves and others
Procrastination: Some causes and cures
Procrastination can be viewed as an emotionally driven response related to our concept of self. Negative emotions arise because we might feel that the task we are putting off simply represents something that we aren’t prepared to handle. We might think of the task as being too difficult or the prospect of failure being tooContinue reading Procrastination: Some causes and cures
The problem with guessing
(and the need for feedback) Guessing can be a useful strategy. Students might not think they know the answer to a question, but they quite often know what it is not, allowing them to reduce the pool of possible options. In the case of multiple choice questions, the sight of the correct answer can triggerContinue reading The problem with guessing
Why Anxiety Makes It Difficult to Recall Information
(But Not To Form New Memories). There remains clear evidence from multiple studies that high levels of anxiety can impair memory function. However, this impairment appears to only impact recall and has either neutral or beneficial impact on memory encoding (the process by which new information is stored). One reason why anxiety impairs the abilityContinue reading Why Anxiety Makes It Difficult to Recall Information
A Model of Student Anxiety
(a work in progress) Why do some students seem to suffer more with anxiety than others? Limited amounts of stress are good for us (especially if we need to escape from a dangerous situation). This acute stress is often fleeting, involving a complex biological and behavioural mechanism that can increase motivation and cognitive function. ButContinue reading A Model of Student Anxiety
A Self-efficacy Primer
The roots of Self-efficacy lie in the work of Canadian social psychologist Albert Bandura and his social-cognitive theory of behaviour. Bandura defines self-efficacy as ‘beliefs in one’s capabilities to organise and execute the causes of action required to produce given attainment’ (Bandura, 1977). Originally applied to clinical settings, interest in self-efficacy has spread to otherContinue reading A Self-efficacy Primer
