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What is subjective wellbeing - it is an emotional or cognitive state of self-awareness - it is 'like' being something. This is the very question of consciousness - what is it 'like' to be someone or something. Many neuroscientists consider this to be an illusion, and that our decisions are made at a much lower cognitive level, subconscious, automatic mechanisms, and the conscious mind only post-hoc creates rationalisations for those decisions.
So why would this have evolved? Is it a useless spandrel, or does it afford an evolutionary advantage? If the latter, then what advantage does a subjective conscious awareness of one's wellbeing afford the invidivual? And if a sense of SWB does afford such an advantage, does it necessarily follow that education that improves that sense of SWB will in fact be evident in actual levels of (Darwinian) wellbeing?
What evidence is there for improvements in SWB actually being associated (causally) with actual improvements in physical (physiological, evolutionary) wellbeing: i.e. the advancement of the selfish gene?
Or, as some would have it, it's just superfluous nonsense that is driven by religious interests, and has not real impact on survival or reproductive outcomes.
Crncec R, Wilson SJ, Prior M. (2006). The cognitive and academic benefits of music to children: Facts and fictions. Educational Psychology, 26, 579-594.
How can neuroscience improve our current understanding - and possibly our practice - of teaching and learning?
Control (Maslow Reconciliation)
Control (thinkEd Reconciliation)
Geary posits that natural selection created biological adaptations in humans in the form of three innate cogntive capacities: folk physics, biology and psychology. Physics to enable the organism to safely negotiate the physical world, biology to understand prey and predation, and psychology to negotiate relationships and competition from con-specifics.
It could be argued therefore that wellbeing can be defined in these terms: an individuals is said to be enjoying wellbeing if s/he is effectively and with fitness, negotiating those three domains.
It could then be further argued that thinkEd's Wellbeing Schema - which arise from distal explanations from the real world (not theoretically) could be meaningfully aligned with these three adaptations - mutually exhaustively.
In contrast, however, Seligman's PERMA schema fails in two significant ways. Firstly, it provides for the construct of meaning, which is not predicted by evolutionary models. Secondly, engagement does not fall neatly into any of the three categories.
It is concluded therefore that the thinkEd schema lends itself more logically to an evolutionary model.
So what has this to do with education? While positive psychology talks about 'what makes for the good life', positive education talks about 'what can and should we teach?". The conclusion from this analysis is that teaching of wellbeing in a way aligned and consistent with evolutionary biology - a veritable factual schema adopted as certain and predictable as any tenet in science, for example gravity - is likely to be more effective in creating wellbeing, than a schema that is not so predicted by evolutionary biology.
The concepts of engagement and meaning are likely, under an evolutionary model, to have no bearing on an individual's wellbeing levels, subjective or otherwise.
Implication for Education: teach thinkEd's schema, not PERMA, and higher wellbeing scores (dependent variable) will ensue, given that teaching methods and other factors are held constant (independent variables).
Type 1 and Type 2 thinking. Type 1 thinking lends itself to Geary's categorisation, but not to school-learning, whereas Type 2 is more akin to formal, logical school-learning.
Other Species (Folk BIOLOGY)
Spacer
Control (PERMA Reconciliation)
Living world (Folk BIOLOGY)
Physical world (Folk PHYSICS)
Other People (Folk PSYCHOLOGY)
Mutilation?
Suicide?
Ill-health?
Drug abuse?
As a VICTIM?
As a PERPETRATOR?
Masters Project (10,000 words, semester 2, 2012)
Define the problem space: teachers are ill-equipped to handle "misbehaviour" at any level, but especially ill-equipped to handle trauma behaviour.
Define a positive approach - using neuroscience and possibly positive psychology - that can be applied to the teachers only (not students, averting the need for ethics committees). Assess impact qualitatively.
The literature review and preliminary findings then becomes the introduction to the Ph.D project in the same area.
Positive Psychology
Trauma
The RAS filters information, and is the seat of beliefs in a computational (connectionist) neuroscientific sense. When the student has been affected by trauma, the RAS creates a set of beliefs, especially self-beliefs, which steer and restrict learning.
Feedback operates at the PFC level, and cannot override those RAS-based beliefs.
Teaching wellbeing therefore requires over-ride or challenge of those beliefs before effective learning can occur.
Effective teaching of wellbeing to traumatised students requires changing the victim's beliefs about their self-concept.
Feedback is of limited efficacy when teaching wellbeing to traumatised students
Neuroscience LIterature
Foundation House Action Research
SIFR Audit
Assessing students
Interviewing teachers
Does praise have an effect when it is directed to the student at their current level (Where am I now) such that it improves the relationship with the teacher, but is less effective when it is directed at the intended learning (How am I going?).
Wellbeing teaching in particular?
Teaching in general?
Assume that beliefs occur in the Reticular Activation System in the hindbrain, and that feedback stimulates higher cortical areas most likely in the PFC. This can be tested using fMRI.
Demonstrate that feedback is less effective with learning that requires changing one's beliefs.
Does stimulation by an external means (TMS for example) of the RAS enhance the effects of feedback in belief-bound learning?
Indicated by Folk domains, learning by modelling.
Contrast Eastern religious or mystical approaches to meditation.
Similarly, contrast mindfulness and meditation: focus on a single point while remaining motionless and emptying the mind, c.f. aligning one's cognitive behaviours with the way the brain has evolved: with constant attentiveness to change and novelty.
Whither metacognition then?
Measure after
Measure before
Select cohort:
Effects on Wellbeing
Effects on Learning
Mindful Awareness
Learning is the adaptive alteration of connections between neurons.
The capacity to learn is a biological adaptation which affords the individual organism with advantages over other species and con-specifics relating to survival and reproduction.
Parenting
Modelling
Direct Instruction
Storytelling
Jonathan Gottschall THE STORYTELLING ANIMAL
Epigenetic
Genetic
Music enhances social cohesion.
Social cohesion enhances biological fitness and assumedly psychological wellbeing.
Learning is a biological adaptation.
Music is a biological adaptation.
Social cohesiveness is a biological adaptation.
Social cohesiveness enhances learning.
So why not incorporate music into learning strategies (not just another contiguous subject in the curriculum).
Natue has selected both learning and social cohesiveness. But why is learning so much better when people are socially connected / cohesive?
Nature Neuroscience
Medina
Geary
Folk Biology
Folk Physics
Folk Psychology
Hebb, Gazzaniga
A similar construct to resiilence (enhanced by CBT/RET, PPP optimism and general communication, soial and emotional interventions) but with a specific focus: the prepareness to fail.
The very antithesis of this is the Positive Pscych concept of playing to one's strengths, and thereby becoming more engaged (better adapted?) and ultimately more successful - having achieved "positive accomplishment". This is supported by Geary's theory that the primary drive of evolutionary adaptation is to exerrt CONTROL over one's environment (folk PHYSICS), one's competing species (folk BIOLOGY) and one's con-specifics (folk PSYCHOLOGY) - the primary objective, encoded in our cognitive structures, is to succeed in our environment (in a biological sense - i.e. to survive and replicate).
But the very word 'fail' may well some unintended 'spandrel-like' negative consequences. If the derogatory nature of thew word fail has emotional byproduct of making the person less likely to try (fear of failure) anxiety at social perception) then an alternative label may enhance both learning adn wellbeing: learning because trying new and more challenging activities expands one's horizons and affords more olpportunites for correcive feedback which Hattie shows is more powerful tfor learning than confirmatory feedback; and wellbeing because the studnt will (i0 avoid teh negative emotions normally associated with failure, including the approbation of peers, and (ii0 benefit from better academic outcomes whaich are also causally assoiciated with adult wellbeing (REF from Dr Nazi).
A possible impediment to 'grit as the preparedness to fail' is the socialisation 9familial and cultural) of children to associate failure with disdain. There may well also be gender and ethnic differences here. In any case, if students have learned to associated failure with negativity and avoidance, they are unlikely to embrace oppotrunities to fail even where they afford opportunities to learn.
Thos who assoicate fialrue with negativiety will be less likely to take risks in learning, despite the benefits that such learning might bring.
If beliefs are the outcome of reorganisation in the RAS filters, then they will be resistant to change by feedback.
need another intervention that can 'scramble' those filters. NLP, Meditation, Medication, External Stimulation (TMS)
IDEA:
Find a belief that hinders learning.
MRI the RAS during the exercise of a particular belief. Find another exercise (cognitive, talk, whatever) that also activates this area (or even TMS directly onto that area while the exercise is happening). and see if the beliefs become more plastic.
Hattie's questions:
Where am i going?
How am I going?
Where to next?
This definitely works in education (meta-analyses). But why. Is it a re-capitulation of neural activity?
1. goal-directed intention as formulated by cognition (where am I going?) INTENTION (and forward planning and Flight-Simulator areas of the brain)
1a. Taking of the action (MOTOR cortex)
2. Attending to the results of the action (How am I going?) FEEDBACK (reflection, SENSORY cortext)
3. Modifying behaviour in light of feedback (Where to next?) FEEDBACK circuits and MOTOR cortex
Is there a FEEDBACK analysis section of the brain? Does it light up during activity? IF there is, could TMS enhance its effectiveness??????
Does the learning process follow this order:
intention, (
action, (MOTOR CORTEX)
feedback, (SENSORY CORTEX to attend to teh environment and perceive the consequences of one' actions) IS ther e a FEEDBACK centre? or is feedback mediated by brainwave patterns as per Nature Neuroscience article?)
adjustment of actions (MOTOR CORTEX)
Is there a Feedback centre of the brain?
if so, can TMS improve its function and thus enhance learning?
