scholarly journals Tools for thinking applied to nature: an inclusive pedagogical framework for environmental education

Oryx ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 584-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Root-Bernstein ◽  
Michele Root-Bernstein ◽  
Robert Root-Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Recognition ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Animal Behaviour ◽  
The Self ◽  
Conservation Education ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Educational Framework ◽  
Thinking Processes

AbstractAn effective educational framework is necessary to develop the engagement of children and adults with nature. Here we show how the tools for thinking framework can be applied to this end. The tools comprise 13 sensory-based cognitive skills that form the basis for formalized expressions of knowledge and understanding in the sciences and arts. These skills are explicitly taught in some curricula. We review evidence of specific tools for thinking in the self-reported thinking processes and influential childhood experiences of prominent biologists, conservationists and naturalists. Tools such as imaging, abstracting, pattern recognition, dimensional thinking, empathizing, modelling and synthesizing play key roles in practical ecology, biogeography and animal behaviour studies and in environmental education. Ethnographic evidence shows that people engage with nature by using many of the same tools for thinking. These tools can be applied in conservation education programmes at all levels by actively emphasizing the role of the tools in developing understanding, and using them to design effective educational initiatives and assess existing environmental education.

Psychopathology and Development: II. Childhood Experiences and Personality Development

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 314-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Rutter
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Personality Structure ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Reciprocal Interactions ◽  
Single Mechanism ◽  
Complex Patterns

Concepts and empirical findings are reviewed with regard to personality development and to the role of childhood experiences in that process. It is concluded that personality development cannot be reduced to the stabilisation of behavioural traits, to the production of a fixed personality structure or to the acquisition of social-cognitive skills, although there is some form of personality organisation in terms of habits, attitudes, concepts and styles of behaviour. Personality development takes place in a social context, with both continuities and discontinuities stemming from maturational and experiential factors and interactions between them. Chains of indirect linkages result from complex patterns of circular processes involving reciprocal interactions between children and their environments. No single mechanism is responsible and no one theory provides an explanation.

The role of the self in creative expression

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Donnelly ◽  
Radmila Prislin ◽  
Ryan Nicholls
Keyword(s):  
Creative Expression ◽  
The Self

The role of the self in organizational justice

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Ramona Bobocel ◽  
Russell E. Johnson ◽  
Joel Brockner
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Justice ◽  
The Self

The role of egocentrism in estimating social evaluations of the self

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Chambers ◽  
Nick Epley ◽  
Paul Windschitl
Keyword(s):  
The Self

From Container to Claustrum: Projective Identification in Couples

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Health ◽  
Projective Identification ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intimate Partners ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If

This paper is a contribution to the growing literature on the role of projective identification in understanding couples' dynamics. Projective identification as a defence is well suited to couples, as intimate partners provide an ideal location to deposit unwanted parts of the self. This paper illustrates how projective identification functions differently depending on the psychological health of the couple. It elucidates how healthier couples use projective identification more as a form of communication, whereas disturbed couples are inclined to employ it to invade and control the other, as captured by Meltzer's concept of "intrusive identification". These different uses of projective identification affect couples' capacities to provide what Bion called "containment". In disturbed couples, partners serve as what Meltzer termed "claustrums" whereby projections are not contained, but imprisoned or entombed in the other. Applying the concept of claustrum helps illuminate common feelings these couples express, such as feeling suffocated, stifled, trapped, held hostage, or feeling as if the relationship is killing them. Finally, this paper presents treatment challenges in working with more disturbed couples.

Cartesian Fingerprints in Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243
Author(s):  
Irit Degani-Raz
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Limiting Case

The idea that Beckett investigates in his works the limits of the media he uses has been widely discussed. In this article I examine the fiction Imagination Dead Imagine as a limiting case in Beckett's exploration of limits at large and the limits of the media he uses in particular. Imagination Dead Imagine is shown to be the self-reflexive act of an artist who imaginatively explores the limits of that ultimate medium – the artist's imagination itself. My central aim is to show that various types of structural homologies (at several levels of abstraction) can be discerned between this poetic exploration of the limits of imagination and Cartesian thought. The homologies indicated here transcend what might be termed as ‘Cartesian typical topics’ (such as the mind-body dualism, the cogito, rationalism versus empiricism, etc.). The most important homologies that are indicated here are those existing between the role of imagination in Descartes' thought - an issue that until only a few decades ago was quite neglected, even by Cartesian scholars - and Beckett's perception of imagination. I suggest the use of these homologies as a tool for tracing possible sources of inspiration for Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine.

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