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As with all Western psychology, I cannot help but make connections to Buddhism (and to get more specific, I'm particularly fascinated by Tibetan Buddhism). I noticed on p. 55 of Why Students Don't like School that "If you can't pay attention to something, you can't learn it!". I am struck by how shamatha meditation is about stabalizing the mind and being present in order to practice vipashyana, which is insight into how the mind works. And since you can't separate your mind from anything you perceive....Buddhists posit that that insight into how the mind works, and how self and identity are constructed, leads to insight into the nature of reality itself.

As with all Western psychology, I cannot help but make connections to Buddhism (and to get more specific, I'm particularly fascinated by Tibetan Buddhism). I noticed on p. 55 of Why Students Don't like School that "If you can't pay attention to something, you can't learn it!". I am struck by how shamatha meditation is about stabalizing the mind and being present in order to practice vipashyana, which is insight into how the mind works. And since you can't separate your mind from anything you perceive....Buddhists posit that that insight into how the mind works, and how self and identity are constructed, leads to insight into the nature of reality itself.

Since factual knowledge is needed for critical thinking skills, I thought that OMG facts might be a good addition to my list. However, since this is a curious website on the wild wild web, I figure that it might be useful in a lesson about how citations and peer review work in academia. That is to say, you could ask students to consider how we know that this information is true. You can even teach them the word "epistemology"! It's also kind of fun, and I reckon the information is generally considered true.

Since factual knowledge is needed for critical thinking skills, I thought that OMG facts might be a good addition to my list. However, since this is a curious website on the wild wild web, I figure that it might be useful in a lesson about how citations and peer review work in academia. That is to say, you could ask students to consider how we know that this information is true. You can even teach them the word "epistemology"! It's also kind of fun, and I reckon the information is generally considered true.

Since background knowledge is essential for critical thinking, that means we have to do some pre-teaching with our lessons! With regards to teaching reading, here are some strategies that you could even commit to memory. I'm sure there are many other strategies as well. :)

Since background knowledge is essential for critical thinking, that means we have to do some pre-teaching with our lessons! With regards to teaching reading, here are some strategies that you could even commit to memory. I'm sure there are many other strategies as well. :)

Pure science without psychology, but I still thought you might find this interesting. I certainly did : )

Hey class, this is a documentary that I just saw in Boulder, CO. The filmmaker just happened to be presenting the film at my friend's house the night that we were passing through. So I got to meet the filmmaker, see the documentary and a bunch of us that attended had a discussion about it as well. It's a little more relevant to our schools and society class (totally a conflict theory perspective) but I'd say it's relevant to EduPsych and anything related to education as well. This is the link to the video with English subtitles, but for those of you who'd like to practice understanding academic Spanish and a variety of South American and Spanish accents, you can just search La Educacion Prohibida on YouTube and you'll find the version with no subtitles.

Here is a collection of activities for learning Spanish. When critical thinking in a second language, it's important to consider how background knowledge may not bee in the target language, but you can help students produce language by studying grammar in conjunction with reading or listening. A lot of second language acquisition scholars are debunking the notion that learning grammar is the pre-requisite to critical thinking in the target language. They can develop side by side with lots of structure and support from the teacher!

Really cool primary research paper on fear conditioning! Worth the read if you are interested. We read this paper in one of my neurobiology classes in undergrad!