The Emotional Learner

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    • 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 been…

    • Why stress is contagious

      (A version of this article appeared at The Huffington Post in 2016) We often view emotions as contained within the individual, sitting privately in our own minds or in the minds of others. However, emotions felt by one group or individual have a powerful influence on the emotional states of others (psychologists call this ‘affect…

    • Does Personality Matter?

      Personality is rarely talked about in educational circles and, probably, for good reason. Not only it is a fairly contentious issue (although not quite as contentious as IQ) it also flies in the face or our deep-seated belief that we are in control of our own lives. That doesn’t stop us from completing that personality…

    • The Introvert In The Classroom

      In a world full of noise the quiet ones often get left behind, their voices drowned out by the cacophony of braver, bolder and more confident children. In a culture where extroversion appears so highly valued, it is all too easy to neglect the introverts, viewing them as merely shy and in need of encouragement…

    • 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 a…

    • 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 points…

    • 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 areas…

    • 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 terms…

    • Making Memories

      How does our brain go about making memories? And where are such memories kept for later retrieval?

    • The Surprising Up Side of Feeling Down

      Let’s be honest, sometimes there is nothing worse than feeling down and having to be around happy people, especially if those people insist on telling us to ‘cheer up’ or (god forbid) to ‘turn that frown upside-down’ (and please don’t tell me how many muscles it takes to frown). But is there any benefit to…