Teacher's Alley

Trait Theory Trait theorists believe personality can be understood by positing that all people have certain traits, or characteristic ways of behaving. A trait is an identifying characteristic, habit or trend. Saying that a trait is either present or absent does not accurately reflect a person's uniqueness, because according to trait theory all of our personalities are actually made up of same traits. We differ only in the degree to which each trait is expressed. Cattell believed it necessary to sample a wide range of variables to capture a full understanding of personality. The first type of data was life data, which involves collecting information from an individual's natural everyday life  behaviors. Experimental data involves measuring reactions to standardized experimental situations and Questionnaire data involves gathering responses based on introspection by an individual about his or her own feelings. Using this data Cattel performed factor analysis to gene

Intro In the 1940's, William Herbert Sheldon associated body types with human temperament types. He claimed that a body type could be linked with the personality of that person. He says that a fat person with a large bone structure tends to have an outgoing and more relaxed personality while a more muscular body typed person is more active and aggressive. A slim or scrawny person with thin muscles is usually characterized as quiet or fragile. He split up these body/personality types into three categories called somatotypes. Endomorphic An Endomorphic somatotype is also known as a viscerotonic. The characteristic traits of this somatotype usually includes being relaxed, tolerant, comfortable, and sociable. Psychologically, they are also fun loving, good humored,even tempered, and they love food and affection. The Endomorph is physically "round". They have wide hips and narrow shoulders that give a pear shape. They tend to have a lot of extra fat on their body a

In 1956, the American educational psychologist Robert M. Gagné proposed a system of classifying different types of learning in terms of the degree of complexity of the mental processes involved. He identified eight basic types, and arranged these in the hierarchy shown in Figure 1. According to Gagné, the higher orders of learning in this hierarchy build upon the lower levels, requiring progressively greater amounts of previous learning for their success. The lowest four orders tend to focus on the more behavioral aspects of learning, while the highest four focus on the more cognitive aspects. Figure 1: Gagne's Hierarchy of Learning Let us now take a closer look at Gagné's eight categories of learning. 1. Signal Learning.  This is the simplest form of learning, and consists essentially of the classical conditioning first described by the behavioural psychologist Pavlov. In this, the subject is 'conditioned' to emit a desired respon

Way before the beginning of the freedom movement in India the need of education had been felt by the Indian social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, etc. Also, the leaders of the freedom movement of India recognized the role of education. Indians with vast diversity in society and social structure were good in indigenous education but there were a large number of drawbacks in social structure. It may be due to our social structure that is divided according to Karmic connections, which took the shape of inequality in society and created a huge gap between the education level of rich and poor; between the Sawarns and the so called Dalits/backward classes. Although the provision of reservation was introduced in the Indian Constitution to remove this inequality and it got success to some extent but still we have a long way ahead in this direction. After the educational reforms all around the world there was a strong feeling in Indian political and social sectors

Carl Rogers (1902-1987) was a humanistic psychologist who developed a personality theory that emphasized the importance of the self-actualizing tendency in shaping human personalities. Rogers believed that humans are constantly reacting to stimuli with their subjective reality (phenomenal field), which changes continuously. Over time, a person develops a self-concept based on the feedback from this field of reality. In the development of self-concept, positive regard is key. Unconditional positive regard is an environment that is free of preconceived notions of value. Conditional positive regard is full of conditions of worth that must be achieved to be considered successful. Carl Rogers agreed with the main assumptions of Abraham Maslow, but added that for a person to "grow", they need an environment that provides them with genuineness (openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regard), and empathy (being listened to and un

Download Bullock Report full text here :  Bullock Report 1975 Background Alan Bullock was born in Wiltshire on 13 December 1914, the son of a gardener and a maid. He first came to public notice in 1952 with his biography Hitler, A Study In Tyranny. He went on to write a three volume biography of Ernest Bevin, the postwar Labour foreign secretary, whom he much admired. In 1960 he became founding master of St Catherine's college in Oxford; he was a trustee of The Observer from 1957 to 1969 and the paper's director from 1977 to 1981; in 1969 was appointed Oxford's first full-time vice chancellor; and he was chair of the Tate gallery from 1973 to 1980. He was made a life peer in 1976 and continued lecturing until 1997. He died on 2 February 2004. (Lord Bullock: obituary The Guardian 3 February 2004). The Committee of Enquiry, appointed in 1972 by Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State for Education in Ted Heath's Conservative government, was given the f

Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development  Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the 20th centuries most influential researchers in the area of developmental psychology.  He was mainly interested in the biological influences on ―how we come to know. Piaget believed that what distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to do ―abstract symbolic reasoning. There are two major aspects to his theory:  the process of coming to know and  the stages we move through as we gradually acquire this ability. Piaget (1936) was the first  psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. His contributions include a theory of child cognitive  development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series  of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities. Before Piaget’s work, the common assumption in psychology was that children are merely less competent thinkers than adults. Piaget showed that young children think