Adult Development of Positive Personality Traits Through Character Formation Mentoring

Positive psychologists have published hundreds of empirical studies correlating positive personality traits with improved outcomes in mental health, physical health, academic and career success, resilience, relationships, and personal happiness. But there remains a dearth of research on the emergence and development of positive personality traits. This grounded theory, qualitative research sought to discover whether positive personality traits can be developed in adult mentoring relationships. Sixteen participants responded in structured interviews about the benefits of their mentoring experiences, and in addition to performing coding analysis as described by Strauss and Corbin (1990), the researcher also compared the answers to Peterson and Seligman\u27s taxonomy of positive traits (2004). Unprompted participant responses overwhelmingly asserted increase of positive traits, as well as five other benefit categories. Improved traits appeared across a wide range of mentee characteristics, and situations, including negative ones, as long as mentors communicated unconditional positive regard and possessed desirable competencies. Social considerations of this research include the possibility that, in combination with therapies to address negative aspects of a client situation, therapists using intentional positive trait development could support recovery, resilience, hope, wisdom, thriving, and all of the benefits positive psychology has correlated to the presence of positive personality traits. Future studies building on this research may include a longitudinal study to understand what situations and character types are most conducive for positive trait development, as well as questions regarding which traits appear in which mentoring situations

Psychology, science and statistical significance testing

The statistical significance test is the dominant data-testing methodology in psychology, yet has many limitations which cast doubt on the suitability of the test for this position. The aim of this thesis is to outline why the significance test has attained its dominant status in psychology, and why the test remains in this position even after numerous harsh criticisms. To this end, there is a consideration of the nature of psychology as a scientific discipline and the socio-historical processes which have shaped this science. It is shown how these forces created the framework within which significance testing could be easily incorporated into psychology, due to the nature of the positivist-based philosophy underlying psychology and significance tests. Once the general conditions allowing the incorporation of significance testing into psychology have been given, there is an outline of the limits of significance testing, illustrating the inadequacies of this method. The factors responsible for the continued dominance of the method in light of its inadequacies are then outlined, and this shows that numerous powerful social and historical processes acting on psychology serve to encourage the retention of the test. Results of an informal survey of the data-analytic practices of New Zealand academic psychologists are included, which asked questions on such things as the main methods used and reasons ·for use of the methods. The results show that significance tests are the dominant method used by the respondents, and suggest a limited understanding, or ignorance, of the problems of significance tests amongst the respondents. Finally, alternative conceptions of science which attempt to overcome the problems of the dominant positivist approach are outlined. The possibilities for psychology and significance testing under these different conceptions are considered

Toward a Unified Theory of Cognition: A Kantian Analysis

The goal of this paper is to provide classroom teachers a more unified theory of cognition. The current cognitive theories of information processing, schema theory, and constructivism exhibit limitations and a lack of cohesion that make their implications for teachers unclear. This paper will be presented in five sections. 1) The first describes problems with current cognitive theories and the need for a unified theory of cognition 2) The second provides a review of the literature of current cognitive theories. 3) The third section consists of research in the history of cognitive theory both in philosophy and psychology. 4) The fourth describes how a fresh look at the philosophy of Immanuel Kant can provide a more unified cognitive theory to educational psychology. 5) Finally, the paper offers specific implications for instruction under these headings: Teachers should describe the concept to be taught as a rule. Teachers should introduce the concept rule by experience or by example. Teachers should use the concept rule as a framework for effective questioning. Teachers should describe the rule with abstract language only after students have understood the rule

Enhancing Student Engagement in Business Sustainability Through Games

Purpose: This practice-focused study explores the value students place on the Sustainable Strategies Game which seeks to improve student engagement in business sustainability through enhanced game-based learning. This game provides an alternative collaborative learning environment to the traditional instructivist approach in order to enrich Education for Sustainability learning experiences and enhance student engagement. Design/Methodology/Approach: Students’ reflections on their game-based learning experiences and suggestions for game development were collected through a short qualitative survey. Results are explored through three frameworks, the Multifaceted Student Value Model, the Dimensions of Engagement Framework and the UK Higher Education Authority Framework for Engagement Through Partnership. Findings: Research findings suggest the Sustainable Strategies Game provides game-based learning within Education for Sustainability that delivers ‘edutainment’ within an active, collaborative and experiential learning environment that the students value. It is also able to challenge thinking and emotionally engage students with the fundamentals of business sustainability. Reflection-on-action and the students’ role as co-researchers in game development allow students to become active participants in their learning as well as knowledge producers and evaluators. These outcomes deliver the UK Higher Education Authority’s core facets of student engagement through partnership. Research limitations/implications: This practice-focused study presents the self-reported results of a one-time, small study which does not offer generalised, independently validated responses. However, the findings may be of interest to educators considering the adoption of game-based learning and those seeking new learning cultures for EfS. Practical Implications: Game-based learning and teaching approaches can achieve a learner-centred active, collaborative learning environment that enhances student engagement with business sustainability. Originality/Value: Experiences gained from this study should assist others in the implementation of game-based learning to engage students in business sustainability

Rollins College Winter Term 1994

Rollins College catalogue with list of faculty and students and courses by department

Content and Psychology

The theoretical underpinnings and practical worth of content-based, intentional, or "folk" psychology have been challenged by three distinct groups of philosophical critics in the past 15 years or so. The first group, comprised by Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and other advocates of "wide" or "externalist" theories of meaning, claims that traditional psychologists have been mistaken in assuming that our beliefs, desires, and other content-laden states supervene on or inhere in our individual minds or brains. The other two groups are both "eliminative materialists," who charge that the intentional approach is inadequate and that it can or will be replaced by a completely non-interpretive discipline: either neuropsychology, in the view of Patricia and Paul Churchland, or a strictly syntactic computational psychology, according to Stephen Stich. ;This dissertation defends "notional world" or narrow intentional psychology against these charges, primarily on the strength of its practical merits, in contrast to the limitations and adverse effects of the proposed alternatives. Psychology is at least partly an applied science with a mandate to help understand and treat concrete psychological problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression, I argue, so any theorist who proposes to reconfigure or phase out existing approaches must be prepared to take over these duties with at least equal facility. However, whereas various "narrow" schools of psychotherapy such as Cognitive Therapy are fairly successful in this regard and show every indication of continuing to be needed for the foreseeable future, the Syntactic Theory seems to show very poor promise of being able to help relieve the distress of people with psychological disturbances, while a purely neurobiological approach is inappropriate in many cases, and tends to cause a variety of untoward and dangerous side-effects. As for the "wide" theorists with their emphasis upon the social and environmental contributions to meaning: they must acknowledge that a good deal of content is in the head; and, more importantly, by focusing on the role of the "experts" in a society's language-game, they miss the whole point of a psychological attribution, which is to understand an individual's reasons--however idiosyncratic--for acting as he or she does

Constructing a critical feminist psychology

The first part of the thesis analyses the conditions for the development of a critical feminist psychology, while the second part exemplifies the practice of a critical feminist psychology in relation to health—specifically breast cancer. The chapters in Part One consider, in turn, the institutional context within which a critical feminist psychology is necessarily located; the theories upon which it might draw; and the methods which it might use, with a particular emphasis on focus group methodology. The chapters in Part Two offer reviews of the feminist and psychosocial literature on breast cancer; and analyses of a data set consisting of thirteen focus group discussions in which women with breast cancer talk about their experiences. The analyses draw upon critical and discursive approaches to examine, in particular, the women's talk about "thinking positive", and about the "causes" of breast cancer

Psychological perspectives on children's spirituality

There have been very few attempts to understand the nature of children's spirituality which have undertaken a study of children themselves. More often this topic has been examined through the various perspectives provided by religious, moral, educational and generally adult agenda. This thesis offers a study of children's spirituality drawing on perspectives from developmental psychology. Its intention is to make a distinctive theoretical contribution towards an understanding of children's nature. The methodological approach is that of an empirical, qualitative investigation and analysis. The main data presented are interviews conducted with six and ten year old children in which the opportunity to discuss potentially spiritual experiences, feelings, and issues was encouraged. Chapter 1 explores the history of interest in spirituality reflected in education policy documents, as well as a selective review of the scholarly education literature this has increasingly inspired. Chapter 2 explores the nature of a psychological contribution. Although the spiritual has rarely found an established place in psychology's research agenda, I offer a compilation of relevant exceptions to this neglect. These are drawn both from explicit attempts by psychologists to investigate discrete aspects of children's religious lives, as well as from psychological models of development in which the nature of children's spirituality is more implicitly suggested. The development of a provisional conceptual framework specifically for children's spirituality (particularly the empirical study of it) is outlined in chapter 3. A variety of psychological scholarship is used to inform this framework, as is a discussion of the complexities affecting the definition of spirituality in a contemporary context. Since few empirical studies have been conducted in this area, the methodological approach devised for this study is described in detail. Considerable attention is given to the foundational issue of the researcher's perspective, as well as the procedural stages from piloting to data analysis. Chapters 5 and 6 offer my interpretative analyses. I describe how repeated qualitative analysis was essential to uncovering layers of meaning in the data, and how this gradually gave way to an interpretative account of children's spirituality expressed in broadly psychological terms. I propose that much of the nature of children's spirituality may be described in terms of a demonstration of a particular kind of consciousness, referred to here as 'relational consciousness'. This core category is further explored in terms of its contributory dimensions, drawing on a coding paradigm suggested by grounded theory methodologists. The final chapter considers additional psychological parallels which this new description of children's spirituality affords, and the more general implications of this work for children's education. It is suggested that the conduct of the study as a whole in terms of its literature research, method, data and analytical framework, demonstrates the potential of pursuing a psychologically informed approach in this area