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Transforming Our Lives through Self Reflection and Psychology
A psychology professor's collection of lessons fostering self-discovery through online activities, hands-on classroom experiences, engaging lectures, and effective discussion prompts.
Kind of Psychology Teaching Resource
Pedagogical Research & Essays
Empirical studies, personal reflection essays, and topic-focused articles hopefully helping us teach and learn.
Teaching has been a passion of mine since I was a kid tutoring my friends, to becoming a K-12 teacher, and today as a college professor. I discovered over years while rules we learn in teacher training can be helpful, they're not set in stone. Sometimes what's 'supposed' to work, doesn't, and what really works is what we recognize in our students' faces.
My hero, Mister Rogers, experienced a similar revelation during his own journey creating Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. As a seminary student, he'd visit churches to learn from experienced preachers. Once he saw a substitute preacher who didn't impress him. Fred's mind raced through a list of mistakes and missed opportunities. Ready to share his critique, he looked to his friend and saw her with tears streaming down her face. "He said exactly what I needed to hear."
Fred realized she came seeking help, while he came with judgment. What makes us powerful educators isn't following rules expertly, but connecting with our students' hearts. While I know rules and research, I try to teach from my intuition, and I try writing personal reflections to maybe help others find their own art in their classrooms too.
My hero, Mister Rogers, experienced a similar revelation during his own journey creating Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. As a seminary student, he'd visit churches to learn from experienced preachers. Once he saw a substitute preacher who didn't impress him. Fred's mind raced through a list of mistakes and missed opportunities. Ready to share his critique, he looked to his friend and saw her with tears streaming down her face. "He said exactly what I needed to hear."
Fred realized she came seeking help, while he came with judgment. What makes us powerful educators isn't following rules expertly, but connecting with our students' hearts. While I know rules and research, I try to teach from my intuition, and I try writing personal reflections to maybe help others find their own art in their classrooms too.
My Hero, Fred Rogers
The anecdote I mention comes from Amy Hollingsworth's conversations with Mister Rogers in her book, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers.
“
I'm trying to tell you something 'bout my life; Maybe give me insight between black and white; And the best thing you ever done for me; Is to help me take my life less seriously ...; Well, darkness has a hunger that's insatiable; And lightness has a call that's hard to hear; And I wrap my fear around me like a blanket; I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it ...
Overviews and Depth on Psychological Topics
Parenting Styles
Diana Baumrind's Parenting Styles with her original descriptions, contemporary findings, and an essay doubling as a Q&A lesson. ✒️📖
Jean Piaget
Did he do a Science of Developmental Psychology?
Did he do a Science of Developmental Psychology?
Piaget's theory is a valuable scientific approach and valuable to teach and learn. Piaget conducted empirical studies and created tasks with reproducible results. His work is falsifiable and, despite having stages, avoids pseudo-scientific errors like teleological mechanisms. Understanding his challenges and the limitations of his theories, as well as comparing his findings with others, enhances our grasp of Developmental Psychology. ✒️📖
Normative Bias in Psychology
Examining normative bias in Psychology with vivid examples such as intelligence tests, morality, neurodivergence and gender & sexuality. By recognizing a measuring stick is not object, we can appreciate ourselves and others more. 📖
Giving Wonderful Psychology Talks
A comprehensive guide to giving engaging Psychology and other science talks, including help crafting a story, knowing your audience, building your confidence, and detailed tips for introduction, method, results, discussion, and handling questions.
Attachment Styles - Getting Stuck in Unhelpful Boxes
Teach and learn about Attachment Styles, and especially how we get stuck reenacting unhelpful patterns based on John Bowlby's concept of canalization, a kind of confirmation bias.
Sex Differences - How Different are Men and Women?
A descriptive review of psychological sex differences found in meta-analyses, while examining effect sizes.
Pedagogy & Technology
Sona Participant Pool for Psychological Research
How To Guide I for conducting research using Sona's internal survey system, including helpful tips for less obvious things (e.g., use color, embed images) and help so you have well-organized useful data files for your analysis. Guides for instructors and participants too. 📖
Switch to Canvas LMS? A comparison with Moodle
A detailed and genuine comparison of Canvas LMS with Moodle after extensive experience with both. Canvas is a poor alternative to Moodle - notably fewer features, less flexibility, costs more and, contrary to marketing, harder to use. 📖
Assessment, Course Evaluations, & Learning Objectives
Beyond Course Evaluations
Evidence and a Measure Inspirational Teaching
Evidence and a Measure Inspirational Teaching
Evidence for, and examples of, teaching with intuition illustrate how we can be inspiring educators and a validated measure illustrates going beyond course evaluations and measuring what truly matters in education. 🍎✒️
Enhancing Course Evaluations with Three Subscales
The Multidimensional Comprehensive Course Evaluation of Student Impressions provides a system of feedback more comprehensive, less biased, and more actionable. 🍎✒️
Notes for Teachers, with legend:
Among the many materials are pedagogical research (labelled 🍎), personal essays I wrote reflecting about teaching (✒️), and reference documents (📖) like handouts and how to guides. I hope some materials help you!