Getting Out of the Way: A Strategy for Engaging Students in Collaborative Learning

The author describes what has been entailed in a shift from a teacher-centered approach — one which relied on her expertise in Chinese studies — to a more student-centered approach in which the teacher creates a learning environment and seeks to “get out of the way” of student learning. She describes concrete strategies for de-centering herself and empowering students, and discusses the roles and responsibilities of the teacher in this alternative model.     

Forward Models: Supervised Learning with a Distal Teacher

Internal models of the environment have an important role to play in adaptive systems, in general, and are of particular importance for the supervised learning paradigm. In this article we demonstrate that certain classical problems associated with the notion of the “teacher” in supervised learning can be solved by judicious use of learned internal models as components of the adaptive system. In particular, we show how supervised learning algorithms can be utilized in cases in which an unknown dynamical system intervenes between actions and desired outcomes. Our approach applies to any supervised learning algorithm that is capable of learning in multilayer networks.     

Taking a Step Back,Moving Forward: Place and Space without Mental Representations

ABSTRACT

The publication of the revised edition of Place and Experience provides the occasion to discuss Malpas’ original account of place, and its role in a proper account of the central features of human minds. The first edition is a groundbreaking work on the embodiment and embeddedness of human minds, that prefigures more recent developments of a now established field of research on embodied minds: so-called E accounts. In this paper, I address three issues in Malpas’ book that I found problematic at times and unclear at others, and argue that E- accounts, or better, a particular rendering of them, can better dissolve. These interrelated issues are: 1. the use of the idea of mental representations to understand location and orientation; 2. the claim that non-human animals have ‘environments’ but lack ‘worlds’, 3. the use of two exclusive vocabularies, the physical and the mental, for describing cognition. I thus question such ideas, associated with traditional accounts of cognition, which not only are responsible for some of the gravest criticisms such accounts have received, but seem inadequate to Malpas’ characterization of minds as placed. My recommendation is to take a step back from the traditional framework, and allow ourselves to simply move forward.     

Engaging Environments Enhance Motor Skill Learning in a Computer Gaming Task

Engagement during practice can motivate a learner to practice more, hence having indirect effects on learning through increased practice. However, it is not known whether engagement can also have a direct effect on learning when the amount of practice is held constant. To address this question, 40 participants played a video game that contained an embedded repeated sequence component, under either highly engaging conditions (the game group) or mechanically identical but less engaging conditions (the sterile group). The game environment facilitated retention over a 1-week interval. Specifically, the game group improved in both speed and accuracy for random and repeated trials, suggesting a general motor-related improvement, rather than a specific influence of engagement on implicit sequence learning. These data provide initial evidence that increased engagement during practice has a direct effect on generalized learning, improving retention and transfer of a complex motor skill.     

Class in the Classroom: Engaging Hidden Identities

Using Marcuse's theory of the total mobilization of advanced technology society along the lines of what he calls "the performance principle," I attempt to describe the complex composition of class oppression in the classroom. Students conceive of themselves as economic units, customers pursuing neutral interests in a morally neutral, socio-economic system of capitalist competition. The classic, unreflective conception of the classroom responds to this by implicitly endorsing individualism and ideals of humanist citizenship. While racism and cultural diversity have come to count as elements of liberal intelligence in most college curricula, attempts to theorize these aspects of social and individual identity and place them in a broader content of class appear radical and inconsistent with the humanistic notion that we all have control over who we are and what we achieve. But tags such as "radical" and "unrealistic" mark a society based on the performance principle. Marcuse allows us to recognize a single author behind elements of psychology, metaphysics, and capitalism. The fact that bell hooks hits upon a similar notion suggests that we might use Marcuse's theory of the truly liberatory potential of imagination to transform and reconceive our classrooms so that the insidious effects of class, racism, and individualistic apathy might be subverted. Specifically, I outline and place into this theoretical context three concrete pedagogical practices: (a) the use of the physical space of the classroom; (b) the performance of community through group readings and short full-class ceremonies, and (c) the symbolic modeling represented by interdisciplinary approaches to teaching. All three of these practices engage students in ways that co-curricularly subvert class (and, incidentally, race divisions) and allow students to imagine, and so engage in, political action for justice as they see it.     

儿童绘图作业内隐学习智力独立性研究

实验采用中性参数程序和绘图作业,让正常智力、轻度智力落后、中度智力落后3组8～12岁右利手儿童接受符合、不符合或与“起始-旋转法则”无关的绘图练习,考察练习对原初行为方式的影响。结果发现,违反“起始-旋转法则”的练习使智力落后组被试的绘图行为发生了明显改变,证明内隐学习具有智力独立性;“意识污染”对内隐学习结果的影响可能是复杂的而非单向的;中性参数实验程序能够更好地隐蔽规则学习的实验目的,但不能有效消除意识污染的影响。     

Movable Peace: Engaging the Transnational in Cambodia's Dhammayietra

The Dhammayietra is an annual peace walk in Cambodia that originated at the historic repatriation of refugees in the Thai border camps at the U.N.-monitored transition to democracy in 1992. It situates itself within the discourse and practice of "socially engaged Buddhism" that has gained visibility in Asia and American Buddhism during the last two decades. As Cambodia's particular form of socially engaged Buddhism is marked by refugee return, I will argue that the Dhammayietra's revival of Buddhism in postsocialist Cambodia is only possible because of its transnational formation. Represented as a quintessential Khmer Buddhist response to Cambodia's entrenched conflicts, the networks forged beyond the border of Cambodia have been instrumental in fashioning the face of the Dhammayietra. Though it forges its discursive identity vis a vis the "local" space of the nation, this local space is mobile. Maha Ghosananda's instruction to move "step by step" toward peace reappropriates dangerous mobility—the massive relocations during the Khmer Rouge era, refugee flight, the danger of treading on land fed with mines—and turns walking into a religious act. It is this discursive "move" that loosens the Dhammayietra's ties to the nation and allows it to slip across political and religious borders and ally itself with a diverse network of interfaith peace groups that are its transnational public forum.     

Step by Step: Avoiding Spiritual Bypass in 12‐Step Work

With spirituality as a cornerstone, 12‐step groups serve a vital role in the recovery community. It is important for counselors to be mindful, however, of the potential for clients to be in spiritual bypass, which likely will undermine the recovery process.     

Looking Back,Looking Forward: ISPP at 40 and Future Directions for Political Psychology

The ISPP Presidential Address typically is an opportunity for the President to outline his or her research contribution and trajectory, and the publication of the Address takes the form of a research article. Given that in 2017, ISPP celebrated its 40th conference and 2018 is its 40th anniversary as an academic society, the 2017 Presidential Address and this article are focused on the state of the Society; What have we achieved? How have we changed? Where are we heading? Looking back, ISPP is a more diverse and international society than in 1978, and it is confidently fulfilling its mission. Looking forward, three areas that warrant further attention are outlined: (1) The issue of a possible decline in scientific rationalism and threat of anti‐liberalism (2) challenges with measurement and prediction of political opinion, political attitudes, and voting behavior, and (3) as a maturing field, the need to establish common theoretical frameworks that integrate current knowledge such as building a case that humans are political animals. Each direction is briefly outlined with the aim of provoking thought and stimulating discussion and debate about the future of political psychology.     

Engaging the severely dysfunctional family in treatment: basic considerations

The severely dysfunctional family is a clinical phenomenon that includes families with a wide range of serious symptoms. These families have been characteristically difficult to engage in treatment, and many do not respond well to traditional family therapy techniques. Some of these families do respond to innovative approaches such as paradox. However, many agencies do not have the capability to implement such highly specialized procedures, nor do all severely dysfunctional families respond well to these techniques. Thus, this paper presents a generic approach to the severely dysfunctional family; the emphasis is on facilitating engagement and maintaining sensitivity to the family's need for stability.     

Repeated Exposure to Forward Support-Surface Perturbation During Overground Walking Alters Upper-Body Kinematics and Step Parameters

Locomotion requires both proactive and reactive control strategies to maintain balance. The current study aimed to: (i) ascertain upper body postural responses following first exposure to a forward (slip) support-surface perturbation; (ii) investigate effects of repeated perturbation exposure; (iii) establish relationships between arms and other response components (trunk; center of mass control). Young adults (N = 11) completed 14 walking trials on a robotic platform; six elicited a slip response. Kinematic analyses were focused on extrapolated center of mass position (xCoM), bilateral upper- and forearm elevation velocity, trunk angular velocity, and step parameters. Results demonstrated that postural responses evoked in the first slip exposure were the largest in magnitude (e.g., reduced backward stability, altered reactive stepping, etc.) and preceded by anticipatory anterior adjustments of xCoM. In relation to the perturbed leg, the large contra- and ipsilateral arm responses observed (in first exposure) were characteristically asymmetric and scaled to the degree of peak trunk extension. With repeated exposure, xCoM anticipatory adjustments were altered and in turn, reduced posterior xCoM motion occurred following a slip (changes plateaued at second exposure). The few components of the slip response that persisted across multiple exposures did so at a lesser magnitude (e.g., step length and arms).     

Engaging families in therapy: A pilot study

Engagement is reviewed as a central component of marriage and family therapy and presented as a viable means of assessing the nature and outcome of therapy. A tentative model containing six differentiated engagement categories is described and documented with clinical data and case examples. Conclusions drawn indicate engagement has merit as a construct for evaluating marriage and family therapy and as a means of generating process hypotheses in research. Recommendations to validate, refine and revise the model are posited and further research relative to engagement is advocated.James P. Trotzer, Ph.D. is Professor of Counselor Education at the University of Visconsin-River Falls, River Falls, Wisconsin 54022, marriage and family therapist in private practice     

Authoritarianism-situation interactions in the determination of punitiveness: Engaging authoritarian ideology

An analysis of previously reported authoritarianism-situation interactions in the determination of punitiveness suggested that the extent to which target person characteristics or behaviors engage the important ideological content dimensions of the authoritarianism syndrome is a potent mediator of authoritariansim-punitiveness relationships. Support for this analysis was obtained in a jury decisions task in which high authoritarians recommended more severe punishments than did low authoritarians for a defendant accused of incest (p < .01) but not for a defendant accused of child abuse in the course of disciplining a disobedient son or daughter. It was argued that a thorough understanding of authoritarianism-situation interactions as well as other disposition-situation interactions will be achieved only if dispositional variables receive a degree of scrutiny at least equal to that which has recently been recognized as crucial for situational variables.     

Everything is What it is,and Not Another Thing: Knowledge and Freedom in Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought

Although Isaiah Berlin's critique of positive liberty has achieved canonical status, its place within his wider political philosophy remains obscure. However, the re-publication of one of his most important philosophical essays, From Hope and Fear Set Free, as part of a new edition of Four Essays on Liberty, simply entitled Liberty, has opened the door to a re-evaluation of Berlin's political project.

At the heart of Berlin's argument, which gains its fullest expression in From Hope and Fear Set Free, stands his contention that positive liberty, in its incarnation as self-realisation, conflates liberty with knowledge, which leads to the distortion of our phenomenologically inescapable structure of experience. This transgression against the conceptual framework in terms of which we think, Berlin argues, played its desolate part in linking the ‘totalitarian temptation’ latent in liberty as self-realisation with the totalitarian politics of the mid-twentieth century.