1. HOW TO APPROACH PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDINGS

2. INSIDERS STRANGERS
Insiders seek the answer to questions within the contexts of their own lives.
(“There is more light here”)
Click for passage 4

3. Why is there more light there?5

4. Experiential Thinking Developing and Maintaining False Beliefs
(everyday, casual, taken-for-granted, there-is-more-light-there, “insider”)
Dangers of Experiential Thinking
Developing and Maintaining False Beliefs 6

5. Help me Doctor …
Once a question has been answered, the answer tends to remains fixed (“My, my dead men do bleed”) 7

6. Developing and Maintaining False Beliefs Experiential Thinking
Dangers of Experiential Thinking
(everyday, casual, taken-for-granted, there-is-more-light-there, “insider”)
Confronting the novel ineffectively 8

7. “We should be careful to get out of an
experience only the wisdom that is in it —
and stop there; lest we be like the cat that
sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never
sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that
is well; but also she will never sit down on a
cold one anymore.”
Mark Twain 9

8. Experiential Thinking
Developing and Maintaining False Beliefs
Confronting the novel ineffectively
Dangers of Experiential Thinking
(everyday, casual, taken-for-granted, there-is-more-light-there, “insider”)
Mental inertia and dogmatism 10

9. DANGER 11

10. We are all insiders in the study of human development12

11. Psychological Thinking . . .
(scientific, reflective, “stranger”)
. . . requires the habit of
ALWAYS SEEING ALTERNATIVES
GAINING AND CHANGING MENTAL PERSPECTIVE 13

12. 14

13. 15

15. 16

16. Psychological Thinking . . .
ALWAYS SEEING ALTERNATIVES
GAINING AND CHANGING MENTAL PERSPECTIVE
. . . requires the habit of
Psychological Thinking . . .
(scientific, reflective, “stranger”)
SUPPLEMENTING OUR LIVED EXPERIENCE WITH INSIGHTS DERIVED FROM RESEARCH AND THEORY TO FORMULATE QUESTIONS AND GUIDE HYPOTHESES (MORE ON THIS LATER) 21

17. CLASS THEMES 22

18. READING A WAVE 23

19. STONES AND ARCHES 24

20. 25 Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.
“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.”
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: “Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.”
Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.” 25

21. WE WHO CUT MERE STONE MUST ALWAYS BE ENVISIONING CATHEDRALS26

22. STORY 27

23. A teacher of an 8th grade gifted language arts enrichment class is interested in students learning to be poetically expressive. A 13-year-old student submits the following poem:
When the wild west winds are blowing
the tall trees will tremble.
When heavy rains fall from the skies
and a torrential downpour hits the earth,
when the tall trees are struck with lightning
and whole forests catch on fire,
that is when we feel nature at its greatest.
After the teacher reads it, the student asks, "Do you like it? Is it good?"
How should the teacher respond? Why. 28

24. Responses of Teachers, Student Teachers, and Psychology Sudents
1. A TEACHER MUST ALWAYS RESPOND POSITIVELY
2. STUDENTS SHOULD BE PRAISED AND ENCOURAGED
3. CRITICISM IS THE ENEMY OF CREATIVITY
4. EVALUATIVE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE REDIRECTED TO THE STUDENT
5. THE VALUE OF POETRY CANNOT BE JUDGED 29

25. Lawrence Blum Moral Perception and Particularity
"Discerning which action best instantiates a given principle requires judgment about the particularities of the situation.“
Lawrence Blum Moral Perception and Particularity
29a

26. “We cannot store up generalizations and constructs for ultimate assembly into a network.”
“When we give proper weight to local conditions, any generalization is a working hypothesis, not a conclusion.”
Lee Cronbach 30

27. The School and Society, p. 31
"It is difficult to connect general principles with such thoroughly concrete things as little children“
John Dewey
The School and Society, p. 31 31

28. STONES &
ARCHES
READING A WAVE
THEMES
STORY
USE OF FORMALISMS 32

29. THE GOAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 33

30. A COMPLETE PERSPECTIVE
IS TO ACHIEVE
A COMPLETE PERSPECTIVE
OF A HUMAN BEING 34

31. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE 35

32. OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING IS . . .
SO . . .
THE ART
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
IS . . . 36

33. THE ART OF GRASPING SIMILARITIES AMONG PHENOMENA AND THUS FORGING PERCEPTUAL PATTERNS AND CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES OUT OF THE FLUX OR APPARENT CHAOS OF EXISTENCE.
WILLIAM JAMES 37

34. HOW BEST TO DISCOVER AND EXPLAIN
SIMILARITIES
PATTERNS
CATEGORIES ? 38

35. THE ROLE OF THEORY 39

36. PSYCHOLOGISTS CREATE AND DEVELOP THEORIES TO EXPLAIN PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA40

37. “Theory is the most practical of men’s instruments.”
Thomas Jefferson 41

38. “Our understanding of human development is built out of theories and research findings, just as a house is built out of mortar and stones. But a collection of findings without theory is no more a basis for sound understanding that a heap of stones is a house.”
Henri Poincare 42

39. INSIDERS STRANGERS
Insiders seek the answer to questions within the contexts of their own lives (“There is more light here”).
Once a question has been answered, the answer tends to remains fixed (“My, my dead men do bleed”).

40. STONES &
ARCHES
READING A WAVE
THEMES
STORY
COMING SOON!!

41. THREE KEY ISSUES
1. FORMALIZING
2. TRUTH in TEACHING
3. RENDERING PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT

42. FORMALIZING
FORMALISMS: BELIEFS THAT BECOME RULES AND PRECEPTS TO BE FOLLOWED REGARDLESS OF CONTEXT
“Formal principles used as recipes save people from having to think.”
“The understanding of particular persons in particular situations is an essential capability of a morally mature individual."

43. FORMALIZING
“We cannot store up generalizations and constructs for ultimate assembly into a network.”
“When we give proper weight to local conditions, any generalization is a working hypothesis, not a conclusion.”
Lee Cronbach

44. TRUTH STANLEY CAVELL TRUTH SIGNIFICANCE COMPREHENSIBILITY
CRITERIA FOR RECIPROCAL CONVERSATION
TRUTH
SIGNIFICANCE
COMPREHENSIBILITY
“ the responsibility to say what we mean and mean what we say.”

45. JUDGMENT
"Discerning which action best instantiates a given principle requires judgment about the particularities of the situation.”
Lawrence Blum

46. JUDGMENT
Judgment is the faculty of subsuming under rules; that is, of distinguishing whether something does or does not stand under a given rule. Judgment is a peculiar talent that can be practiced only and cannot be taught. Although admirable in understanding, one may be wanting in the natural power of judgment. One may comprehend the universal in abstracto, and yet not be able to distinguish whether a case in concreto comes under it.
Immanuel Kant