This literature review, published in partnership with Stanford University’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching, summarizes findings from existing research on teacher coaching and explores the following questions: What is the role of technology in the 21st century classroom? How do we best provide teachers with the time, support, and space to learn how to use new technological tools and resources effectively and to support deeper learning?
AbstractWhitehouse adapts insights from evolutionary anthropology to interpret extreme self-sacrifice through the concept of identity fusion. The model neglects the role of normative systems in shaping behaviors, especially in relation to violent extremism. In peaceful groups, increasing fusion will actually decrease extremism. Groups collectively appraise threats and opportunities, actively debate action options, and rarely choose violence toward self or others.
AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.
Abstract
Tomasello offers a compelling account of the emergence of humans’ sense of obligation. We suggest that more needs to be said about the role of affect in the creation of obligations. We also argue that positive emotions such as gratitude evolved to encourage individuals to fulfill cooperative obligations without the negative quality that Tomasello proposes is inherent in obligations.
Abstract
The authors do the field of cultural evolution a service by exploring the role of non-social cognition in human cumulative technological culture, truly neglected in comparison with socio-cognitive abilities frequently assumed to be the primary drivers. Some specifics of their delineation of the critical factors are problematic, however. I highlight recent chimpanzee–human comparative findings that should help refine such analyses.
Abstract
This commentary focuses upon the relationship between two themes in the target article: the ways in which a Markov blanket may be defined and the role of precision and salience in mediating the interactions between what is internal and external to a system. These each rest upon the different perspectives we might take while “choosing” a Markov blanket.
Extended AbstractRecent numerical simulations lead to the result that turbulence is much more magnetically driven than believed. In particular the role ofmagnetic buoyancyappears quite important for the generation ofα-effect and angular momentum transport (Brandenburg & Schmitt 1998). We present results obtained for a turbulence field driven by a (given) Lorentz force in a non-stratified but rotating convection zone. The main result confirms the numerical findings of Brandenburg & Schmitt that in the northern hemisphere theα-effect and the kinetic helicityℋkin= 〈u′ · rotu′〉 are positive (and negative in the northern hemisphere), this being just opposite to what occurs for the current helicityℋcurr= 〈j′ ·B′〉, which is negative in the northern hemisphere (and positive in the southern hemisphere). There has been an increasing number of papers presenting observations of current helicity at the solar surface, all showing that it isnegativein the northern hemisphere and positive in the southern hemisphere (see Rüdigeret al. 2000, also for a review).