Understanding emotions, learners and achievement
We tend to identify different personalities intuitively. Some people we might describe as ‘live wires’ while others are more contemplative; others, still, might be prone to worry or are avidly curious. We often describe these differences using folk theories with a light smattering or psychology, so we might call the quiet people introverts and theirContinue reading Is there a learning personality?
(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
Adapted from Chapter 10 (Control) of Becoming Buoyant, now available. Control, within an academic environment, refers to the belief that students are able to control their own academic outcomes. Control in this context doesn’t refer to students ability to dictate their own learning (such as choosing activities), but rather, to be the vehicles of theirContinue reading Attribution Theory and Learning
Exciting news! Becoming Buoyant: Helping Teachers and Students Cope with the Day to Day is due for publication next month (July 2020). It’s taken me about five years to write this, indeed, I began investigating resilience well before I began writing The Emotional Learner. If you’re a regular visitor to the this site or you’veContinue reading Becoming Buoyant
Failure is still seen as something to feel ashamed of rather than a vital component of eventual success. The need to succeed first time and our propensity towards perfection, however, can often lead to either the illusion of success or act as a barrier to it. Failure is ubiquitous, it’s experienced by everybody, from studentsContinue reading Re-evaluating Failure
I think Nick Rose hit the nail on the head with his comments on resilience in What does this look like in the classroom? To paraphrase Nick, if you were to ask thirty teachers what resilience was, you would be likely to receive thirty different explanations. I’ve been mulling over the whole issue of resilienceContinue reading Resilience: A Love-Hate Relationship
The Long Read… (Originally published in The Psychologist, September 2015) Despite the growth of so-called non-cognitive skills interventions in schools, such as resilience training, there often exists a degree of dissonance regarding the definition of such terms. Resilience interventions have been found to use the term in different ways, reducing the significance of any measurableContinue reading From adversity to buoyancy
The Emotional Learner 