scholarly journals Deconditioning the Mind for Better Learning: The Gift of Reasoning

Author(s):  
Willy Lima ◽  
Nicole Mauzard

This paper discusses classical or Pavlovian conditioning, deconditioning, and critical thinking within the context of the human condition and relevant literature. The practical goal of this analysis is to demonstrate how to ‘reprogram’ our thinking from previous, somewhat dysfunctional learning to improve our responsiveness to others and our joy. Becker (2020) defined deconditioning as a systematic self-training process to free oneself from “undesirable desires”–urges and emotions that pop up when we would prefer they did not, thereby making life more stressful. By training oneself to ‘tune out’ these undesirable or distracting desires, one becomes more capable of making and adhering to intentional decisions. Such purposefulness can lead to increased experiences of the pleasures of life emanating from a sense of freedom rather than compulsion (Becker, 2020,p.1). To achieve that goal, this paper explores the important distinctions between conditioning and deconditioning, examining their roles and usefulness in learning generally. In this pursuit, several pertinent articles and books describing conditioning and deconditioning, combined with critical reflection on the researcher’s relevant experiences, are examined to illustrate how people can ‘decondition’ their thinking to stimulate appropriate reasoning for improved learning and memory. Briefly, deconditioning can lead to superior reasoning, resulting in benefits for learning, character development and beyond.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Fox ◽  
Regina Lapate ◽  
Alexander J. Shackman ◽  
Richard J Davidson

Emotion is a core feature of the human condition, with profound consequences for health, wealth, and wellbeing. Over the past quarter-century, improved methods for manipulating and measuring different features of emotion have yielded steady advances in our scientific understanding emotional states, traits, and disorders. Yet, it is clear that most of the work remains undone. Here, we highlight key challenges facing the field of affective sciences. Addressing these challenges will provide critical opportunities not just for understanding the mind, but also for increasing the impact of the affective sciences on public health and well-being.


2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiran Fatima Fatima Mehboob Ali BANA

Objectives: To identify the improvement in knowledge, presentation skills, critical skills and self-directed learning process during Journal Club platform amidst dental house officers of 2018, 2019 and 2020 after completing one year house job training at Bahria dental College Karachi. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted from Dec- 2018 till Dec-2020. The six items were asked about perception of change for evidence-based process of (knowledge, cognitive, affective and participant domains) after completion of house job training by each cohort. The responses were noted on three point likert scale as agree, neutral and disagree. Total 150 questionnaires were distributed in three cohorts. The SPSS version 23 was used. P-value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Total n=145 house officers had completed the proforma with response rate of 96.65%. The mean age was 24.45 ± SD 0.63 among three groups. There were n=20(14%) males and n=125(86%) females. There was improvement found for knowledge acquisition about relevant literature search among all three groups. Regarding knowledge acquisition of bio-statistics; majority of subjects n=26 (52%) in 2020 group had reported no change and in 2019 cohort n=23(48%) were agreed. Majority n=21(44%) of house officers had reported no change when asked as JC helped in critical thinking in year 2019. Conclusion: Knowledge acquisition about relevant literature search, presentation and confidence skills were improved but no significant changes were found in knowledge of biostatistics and critical thinking skills. JC is a convincing platform to learn evidence-based process amid dental house officers. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.38.1.4562 How to cite this:Bana KFMA. Journal Club is a way forward to adopt Evidence Based Practice among dental House Officers. Pak J Med Sci. 2022;38(1):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.38.1.4562 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (36) ◽  
pp. 798-815
Author(s):  
Sigit Dwi SAPUTRO ◽  
TUKIRAN A. ◽  
Zainul Arifin Imam SUPARDI ◽  
Budi JATMIKO

Work and energy are contents traditionally addressed in the study of physics and engineering. This is because this topic is part of people's daily lives; that is, they are critical thinking skills included in 21st century learning achievements that must be mastered by students. This study aimed to make an appropriate assessment formulation to measure students' critical thinking skills in work and energy. The systematic method of review was carried out through three stages. The first step was to search for relevant literature sources through a database and books. The database used included SAGE Journals, Wiley Online Library, Science Direct, and Google Scholar. There were 115 journals or proceedings that have been examined and then selected 50 articles following established criteria. The second stage determined formulating achievement indicators, and the third stage developed conceptual tests of critical thinking skills. Based on this study on the conceptual framework of the study to measure students' critical thinking skills in teaching materials for work and energy, it was concluded that (1) indicators of critical thinking skills on work and energy include interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation; (2) the basic principles of making critical thinking test instruments include presenting phenomena, open-ended tests, and testing the rationality of answers; and (3) there were examples of the application of the development of the critical thinking skills test instrument for indicator analysis.


Author(s):  
Eric C. Otto

     Read as apocalyptic ecothrillers, Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm and Liz Jensen’s The Rapture do not offer much in the way of critical reflection on the ecocatastrophes they stage. The Swarm’s focus on the feat of confronting the violent efforts of a superintelligent, deep-sea species to protect its ocean habitat against continued human exploitation and The Rapture’s focus on the feat of locating on time the psychically-predicted disaster zone of an impending undersea calamity overshadow their more than occasional spotlighting of, for example, the dangers of methane hydrate mining. Science fiction, however, requires readers to be attentive to those narrative moments when incongruities between the known world and the extrapolated world of the text emerge with critical, not just plot-supporting, purpose. Fundamental to the reading and interpretation of science fiction is the reader’s awareness of the genre’s extrapolative practice, which connects the now with the imagined then and therefore instigates critical thinking about present human practices. Read as extrapolative science fiction, The Swarm and The Rapture gain merit as ecopolitical works, for “science fiction reading” mobilizes the latent ecopolitics of ecothrillers, ecopolitics that “ecothriller reading” would otherwise diminish or fail to notice.   Resumen               Considerados ecothrillers apocalípticos, The Swarm de Frank Schätzing y The Rapture de Liz Jensen no ofrecen mucha reflexión crítica sobre las eco-catástrofes que presentan. The Swarm se centra en los violentos esfuerzos de una especie superinteligente que habita las profundidades para proteger su hábitat marino frente a la continua explotación humana. Por su parte,  al centrarse The Rapture en la hazaña de ubicar en el tiempo la zona catastrófica de un desastre submarino inminente que ha sido predicho psicológicamente, se eclipsan las más que ocasionales referencias a, por ejemplo, los peligros de la minería de hidrato de metano. La ciencia ficción, sin embargo, requiere que los lectores estén atentos a esos momentos narrativos en los que las incongruencias entre el mundo conocido y el mundo extrapolado del texto surjan con objetivo crítico, y no sólo para respaldar el argumento. Es fundamental para la lectura y la interpretación de la ciencia ficción la conciencia por parte del lector de la práctica extrapolativa del género, que conecta el ahora con el entonces imaginado, incitando así a reflexionar críticamente sobre el comportamiento humano en la actualidad. Considerados ciencia ficción extrapolativa, The Swarm y The Rapture ganan mérito como obras eco-políticas, porque "la lectura de ciencia ficción" moviliza la eco-política latente de  los eco-thrillers – eco-política que en "la lectura de eco-thrillers" de otra forma pasaría desapercibida.


Author(s):  
Roland Végső

The chapter examines Hannah Arendt’s critique of martin Heidegger and concentrates on the way Arendt tries to subvert the Heideggerian paradigm of worldlessness. While for Heidegger, the ontological paradigm of worldlessness was the lifeless stone, in Arendt’s book biological life itself emerges as the worldless condition of the political world of publicity. The theoretical challenge bequeathed to us by Arendt is to draw the consequences of the simple fact that life is worldless. The worldlessness of life, therefore, becomes a genuine condition of impossibility for politics: it makes politics possible, but at the same time it threatens the very existence of politics. The chapter traces the development of this argument in three of Arendt’s major works: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and The Life of the Mind.


Author(s):  
Peter Smith

The PhD is the highest level of academic qualification, and is by its very nature an exercise in the development of critical thinking. This chapter discusses what it means to study for a PhD and the problems that students have with developing skills of criticality. The author discusses his own experiences of supervising over 50 doctoral students and relates this to the relevant literature. The role that the supervisor, research training, the thesis, dissemination and the viva can play in developing critical thinking are discussed. The power of specific techniques including reflection, action research and action learning are also explored. The chapter presents areas worthy of future study and concludes by presenting an agenda which PhD students and their supervisors might follow.


2021 ◽  
pp. 43-80
Author(s):  
Cathy Benedict

Through a series of scaffolded lesson plans that begin in the classroom and then move out into the world, this chapter addresses friendship and bullying through the lens of critical literacy. Friendship has long been the sacrosanct goal of elementary socialization. This chapter calls into question the simplicity of the concept and weighs that against bullying. The texts used in this chapter begin “simply” enough, with books such as Tubby the Tuba and Ben’s Trumpet, but then moves into texts that push students to consider poverty and war as a form of bullying. Books such as Petar’s Song, The Harmonica, and finally Revolución afford opportunities for both critical reflection and musicking, while a reimagined version of Peter and the Wolf asks students to ponder ethical dilemmas grounded in loyalty, death, societal pressures, the human condition, nature, friendship, and sacrifice.


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