Above: The clean GUI of the Google classroom. Besides standard themes, the header can be customized, as shown here. Students can also invite themselves via a Class Code. Some background The first e-learning platform I ever encountered was the Open Source project ‘Moodle’, which had been used for the University of Oxford’s undergraduate and professional training courses. However, when we tried to install and use Moodle for my college, we found it to be somehow cumbersome…
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Strengths and Limitations of Behaviorism for Human Learning
The Evidence from Research on Behavioral Theories Pavlov’s work on classical conditioning (Pavlov, 1927) and Skinner’s concept of operant conditioning (Skinner, 1953) have provided the blueprints for evidence-based applications in behaviorism. Behaviorism has since proven effective, for example in the diagnosis of patients with mental disorders by operationalizing the acquisition of new behavior (Barrett & Lindsley, 1962), improving item-recall for dementia patients (Dixon et al., 2011) or for conditioning students in military and technical education…
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Emotional Intelligence: Pop-psychology Without Evidence
The figure of Hannibal Lecter, here represented by actor Mads Mikkelsen, would be a perfect example of emotional intelligence. What compelling evidence exists for Emotional Intelligence (EI)? The concept of emotional intelligence was heavily popularized by the publications of psychologist-journalist Daniel Goleman. Goleman claims for example that EI accounts for 80% of work performance and life success and is directly linked to career progression (Goleman, 1995, 1998). However, not all types of emotional intelligence appear…
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Troubled Schools: Theory, Evidence-based Interventions and Assessment
Let’s take a school with a teenage population that is troubled by poor examination performance, high levels of truancy and high incidents of bullying. Which would be reasonable options to improve students’ emotion regulation and social functioning? 1. Adolescent Psychology The goals of an educational psychologist addressing such a scenario include the implementation of programs aiming to improve the emotion regulation and social functioning of students and to prevent future development of mental disorders. Adolescence…
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Cognitive Approaches in High-Performance Sport Psychology
Introduction Cognitive theories of the 70s were predominantly based on an information-processing approach (Lachman, Lachman & Butterfieled, 1979), or more simply put ‘minds are bundles of computations.’ (Edelman, 2008, p.181). This view has changed fundamentally over the past decades. The current embodiment approach to cognition proposes a direct link between thinking and skilled action which is critical to sports performance (Moran, 2012). Executive functions are vital for novices to learn novel skill-sets under the oppositional…
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Domestic Violence against Women in Thailand
Domestic Violence: A Brief Description Based on an international landmark study by the World-Health Organization (WHO, 2006; Garcia-Moreno et al., 2006), domestic violence in Thailand ranks high in the categories of sexual violence and combined sexual and physical violence, with higher prevalence in rural areas (Garcia-Moreno et al., p. 1265). A survey by Mahidol University’s National Institute for Child and Family Development in 2012 reported a sharp increase in domestic abuse encompassing 30.8 % of…
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The Psychology of Credit Debt
How do people end up in debt? The following essay on the psychology of credit debt is structured into two parts. The first part investigates why people spend more than they have and the second part asks how a team of social psychologists could develop an effective public campaign against falling into credit debt. Part 1: Why people spend more than they have We can identify a plethora of decision-making processes to why people spend more money…
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Prejudice in Everyday Life: The Example of White Skin Preference
Why prejudice and stereotypes might be inevitable When we talk about stereotypes and prejudice we could argue that they are, to some extent, inevitable. Our natural tendency to draw generalizations from particular social instances based on real group differences (Wright & Taylor, 2007, p.435) and conflicts (Sherif, 1966) creates stereotypes, both positive and negative. Who can honestly say to be entirely free of prejudice? Preconceived negative judgment of others appears unavoidable, especially under social conflict and social…
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Children & Device Dependency
Parents whose toddlers and children have developed an addiction to tablets, mobile phones or the Internet tell pretty much the same story. Once hooked on digital media any withdrawal comes at the price of their children becoming socially unavailable and throwing tantrums once separated from their new toys (Brandon, 2010). Alternatively children spend most of their time hypnotized in front of their irresistible magical screens and estrange from family life. The fact that digital media have the same psychological effects…
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On Aggression between Groups
A conceptual Postscriptum to ‘Is Thailand heading Towards a Failed Nation?’ Dear Readers, for the May Issue of ‘Live Encounters’ I have published an article with the title ‘Is Thailand heading Towards a Failed Nation?’ which can be found here. You can also locate it in the magazine’s PDF version. I found the topic exciting enough to add the post-scriptum below. Special thanks go to Mark Ulyseas for inviting me as an author. Ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation (Brewer, 1999) are obvious…
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