Understanding emotions, learners and achievement
You might have noticed that when you’re talking to someone, it’s often difficult to maintain eye contact. Teachers might have noticed that when children are addressing the class or attempting to answer a challenging question, they will avert their gaze away from their audience. Psychologists call this behaviour gaze aversion and it’s thought to serveContinue reading The Importance of Looking Away
(Adapted from Becoming Buoyant, 2020, Chapter 5) Do you like popcorn? For the sake of argument let’s assume that you do. Not only do you like popcorn, you are also an avid cinema goer and like nothing more than a large tub of popcorn to enhance the experience. This is a routine that operates likeContinue reading Creating Good Habits
According to Soderstrom and Bjork, latent learning refers to “learning that occurs in the absence of any obvious reinforcement or noticeable behavioural changes” (Soderstrom and Bjork, 2015 p177). Most often associated with the work of Edward Tolman in the 1930s, latent learning is viewed as hidden (or behaviourally silent) because it is only when reinforcementContinue reading What is Latent learning?
Still not entirely sure what to call this series; Friday Five, Five on Friday? Anyway, here are five tips to help you overcome procrastination. Other videos are available on the channel, so please consider subscribing.
I don’t write much about classroom behaviour, or rather, I don’t write explicitly about classroom behaviour. In fact, this post is more about behaviour in general, with some comments on behaviour in schools, so please don’t assume that I’m setting myself up as a behaviour guru (there are plenty of those already). In fact, I’mContinue reading Why do we break the rules?
I recently wrote about how we can manipulate our audience for personal gain. I was certainly being somewhat satirical, yet the main purpose of the piece was to highlight how easily we can be manipulated and how often we unintentionally wind up promoting the types of people we would rather not see become even moreContinue reading Framing Language To Promote Positive Behaviour
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.
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
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
