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TALENT |
Exceptional performance is developed through hours of deliberate practice. Because this is so, the course covers how teachers can provide classroom opportunities for students to engage in deliberate practice and how teachers can support students’ motivation to engage themselves enthusiastically in hours of deliberate practice. Many examples are provided. |
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Psychosocial Development |
Psychosocial development is the study of how students’ sense of self thrives or flouders in the context of the quality of the relationships in their lives. This class uses an Eriksonian work to study preschoolers’ developing initiative, elementary-age students developing competence, and secondary-school students’ developing identity. |
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The Emotions and Emotional Development |
This class defines emotion, identifies the key psychological and social processes that affect emotion and emotional development, and outlines the typical emotional development of the K-12 student. |
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Personality Development |
To answer the question, “How many traits are there?”, the class focuses on the “Big 5” relatively stable and classroom-relevant personality characteristics of extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Each personality characteristic is defined, and a good deal of class time is spent on measuring and interpreting personality scores. We explain why each personality characteristic is important for the context of schooling. |
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Aggression |
Conflict is an inevitable part of classroom life. Hence, teachers need to be aware of the two main types of aggression, the developmental origins of both of these types of aggression, and the remedies and ways of coping with both types of aggression—instrumental and hostile. Special emphasis is placed on differentiating the two types and offering ways teachers can best cope with each type of aggression in the class setting. Briefly, data are shown to support the direct effects that exposure to violent video games have on children and adolescents’ subsequent displays of aggression. |
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Social Competence |
This class highlights and defines the concept of social competence, explaining why some students tend to lack social competence while others have a strong prosocial orientation. The class shows how teachers can promote students’ developing social competence, including fostering empathy and perspective taking. The class further emphasizes students’ development of character (or conscience) and, also, the distinction between situational compliance and committed compliance. |
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Moral Development |
This class overviews judgments of right versus wrong and, also, students’ reasoning to explain why one act is right while another one is wrong. The two theories of Kohlberg and Gilligan are introduced and explained to show how students’ moral development changes throughout the K-12 school years. |
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