Key Concepts in Education and Classroom Management
Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)
BICS: Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) are skills used in conversational, social language. It’s everyday language used in social interactions.
CALP: Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) is language used in academic situations. It refers to academic language.
Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT)
Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) involves using cultural knowledge, prior experiences,
Read MoreUnderstanding Psychosocial Processes, Socialization, and Personality
The Individual and Psychosocial Processes
- The Individual as a Subject of Psychosocial Processes
- The social groups we belong to influence our personality.
- Psychosocial ideas are acquired socially.
- A key difference between humans and other animals is that our approach to reality is shaped by the culture and society we are part of. Our identity as individuals is formed within the context of the group.
- There are two types of realities:
- External Reality: The things that surround us, that we can see and feel
Research and Scientific Method: Definition and Types
Etymology: in (Latin) = in, into; vestigium (Latin) = trace, mark, sign, or signal. Investigate = to trace or follow the vestige of something. Investigate (investigare in Latin) is an action verb meaning to make inquiries, keep track of someone or something in order to find out new knowledge (Moreno-Heméndez, 1997). Research is the search for knowledge and its validation on important issues.
Booth and Williams (2001) define research as a rigorous process that uses methods and techniques to obtain
Read MoreCultural Dynamics and Human Sociability
Interculturalism and Dialogue
- Cultural Relativism: Considers that it is impossible to compare and evaluate characteristics of different cultures. It is based on the belief that every culture has value in itself, since all the elements are understood and explained by an internal logic. This can serve as an excuse for passivity and inaction against unjust and inhumane acts.
- Universalism: Proposes a rejection of ethnocentric attitudes to avoid imposing one culture on another. It is based on real dialogue
Classical and Operant Conditioning Explained
Classical Conditioning
A basic concept for understanding classical conditioning is the reflex. A reflex signifies a single unit of innate behavior, characterized by an inevitable response to a change in environmental conditions. It involves a combination of two factors: a stimulus (S) and a response (R).
For example, consider the knee-jerk reflex: the lifting or movement of the leg, calf, and foot (R) occurs after tapping the knee with a small hammer (S). The Russian physiologist I. Pavlov (1927)
Read MoreWeber’s Bureaucracy: Rationalization, Morality, and the Aston Studies
Representational modernism consisted of sketching a singular set of empirical tendencies imagined to be irresistible and inevitable. These were the famous ‘rationalization’ of the world, the success of which would be attributed to bureaucracy as the primary mechanism of its achievement.
Its outcome was to be our imprisonment in the house of bondage – the iron cage of bureaucracy.
From Weber’s modernist vision of the world, it is, in many respects, a bleak and pessimistic vision, leavened only by
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