InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development (Video) Search InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development This edition of the InBrief series addresses basic concepts of early childhood development, established over decades of neuroscience and behavioral research, which help illustrate why child development—particularly from birth to five years—is a foundation for a prosperous and sustainable society. View this video en Español >> Download PDF version of this InBrief >> More from the InBrief series >> InBrief: Executive Function: Skills for Life and Learning InBrief: The Foundations of Lifelong Health InBrief: The Impact of Early Adversity InBrief: Early Childhood Program Effectiveness View more videos >> Major support for the InBrief videos has been provided by: the Birth to Five Policy Alliance, the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, the Norlien Foundation, and Susan Fales-Hill. Sign up to receive the Center's e-mail newsletter and other announcements >> Subscribe to the Center's RSS feed for news and announcements >>
5 Routines To Clear Mental Clutter That smartphone in your pocket? It’s nearly doubling the amount of time you spend working. A 2013 survey by the Center for Creative Leadership found that the typical smartphone-carrying professional interacts with work an average of 72 hours a week. No wonder we’re all so stressed out. "Year after year, people complain of being more overwhelmed than they were the year before," says Scott Eblin, author of Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative "It’s an epidemic that needs to be addressed." It started during the financial crisis of 2008, says Eblin. For Eblin, an executive coach and president of the Eblin Group, the impact of stress hit home in 2009 when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. "Managing MS is about managing stress," he says. The entry point to mindfulness is awareness, but Eblin says the endless amount of distractions in today’s world makes it difficult. The opposite of fight or flight is "rest and digest." 1. 2. What was supposed to happen? 3. 4. 5.
Using Humor to Deal With Setbacks By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on July 15, 2011 A new study finds that positive reframing — looking at a thing in a different light — and perhaps laughing about life’s daily small setbacks is an effective way to feel satisfied at the end of the day. Researchers used a diary study to review the strategies people use to deal with the small setbacks and failures that we all experience on a daily basis. In the study, 149 students completed daily diary reports for 3 to 14 days, reporting the most bothersome failure they experienced during the day, what strategies they used to cope with the failure, and how satisfied they felt at the end of the day. Students used a variety of coping strategies including emotional or instrumental support; self-distraction; denial; religion; venting; substance use; self-blame; and behavioral disengagement. This strategy helped students deal with failures and feel satisfied at the end of the day. Psychologists Drs.
PDQ Blog An inside look at some of the top teacher prep programs Today NCTQ released its Teacher Prep Review, which takes a close look at the quality of training provided by 2,420 teacher preparation programs across the country. Our results show that most have a long way to go to get teachers classroom ready from day one. But there are some programs that stand out. It's programs like these that aspiring teachers should strongly think about applying to and that districts should look to recruit from. Lipscomb University (Tennessee)Strengths: Undergraduate secondary overall (4/4 stars) Ohio State University Strengths: Graduate secondary overall (4/4 stars), graduate elementary overall (3.5/4 stars) Lousiana State University Strengths: Common Core elementary mathematics (4/4 stars) and selection criteria (4/4 stars) for undergraduate elementary Arizona State University Morgan State University — Ginger Moored
How can you change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset? Step1. Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.” As you approach a challenge, that voice might say to you “Are you sure you can do it? As you hit a setback, the voice might say, “This would have been a snap if you really had talent.” As you face criticism, you might hear yourself say, “It’s not my fault. Step 2. How you interpret challenges, setbacks, and criticism is your choice. So as you face challenges, setbacks, and criticism, listen to the fixed mindset voice and... Step 3. As you approach a challenge: THE FIXED-MINDSET says “Are you sure you can do it? THE GROWTH-MINDSET answers, “I’m not sure I can do it now, but I think I can learn to with time and effort.” FIXED MINDSET: “What if you fail—you’ll be a failure” GROWTH MINDSET: “Most successful people had failures along the way.” FIXED MINDSET: “If you don’t try, you can protect yourself and keep your dignity.” GROWTH MINDSET: “If I don’t try, I automatically fail. As you hit a setback: GROWTH MINDSET: “That is so wrong. Then... Step 4.
Positive reframing, acceptance and humor are the most effective coping strategies New research from the University of Kent has revealed that positive reframing, acceptance and humour are the most effective coping strategies for people dealing with failures. In a paper published by the international journal Anxiety, Stress & Coping, Dr Joachim Stoeber and Dr Dirk Janssen from the University's School of Psychology describe a diary study that found these three strategies to be most effective in dealing with small failures and setbacks, and helping people to keep up their spirits and feel satisfied at the end of the day. For the study, a sample of 149 students completed daily diary reports for 3 -- 14 days, reporting the most bothersome failure they experienced during the day, what strategies they used to cope with the failure, and how satisfied they felt at the end of the day. Their coping strategies included: using emotional or instrumental support; self-distraction; denial; religion; venting; substance use; self-blame; and behavioural disengagement.
What Do Babies Think? Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Unstoppable Learning. About Alison Gopnik's TEDTalk Alison Gopnik's research explores the sophisticated intelligence-gathering and decision-making that babies are doing when they play. About Alison Gopnik What's it really like to see through the eyes of a child? On the contrary, argues Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives “If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve,” Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: “Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…” Far from Pollyanna platitude, this advice actually reflects what modern psychology knows about how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) — an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality.
Why does failure inspire some and demoralize others? Stanford Magazine reports on the applications from psychological research Carol Dweck's work, which uses careful experiments to determine why some people give up when confronted with failure, while others roll up their sleeves and dive in. Through a series of exercises, the experimenters trained half the students to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encouraged them to keep going. Those children learned to persist in the face of failure–and to succeed. The control group showed no improvement at all, continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly. These findings, says Dweck, “really supported the idea that the attributions were a key ingredient driving the helpless and mastery-oriented patterns.” The Effort Effect, Carol Dweck's book, "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" (Thanks, Dad!)
Mapping Brain Connectivity The new field of “connectomics” aims to show how brains behave at a level not previously possible—examining how entire brains are wired together, how wiring changes as brains grow up, and how interactions with the external world affect this wiring. The Lichtman Lab at Harvard University, a partner in the Conte Center at Harvard, pioneered tools to potentially map every connection in a complete brain and has started to map the connectome in mouse brains. In this narrated, 15-minute multimedia presentation, postdoctoral fellow Bobby Kasthuri shares some of the results and insights from his work at the Lichtman Lab, using images and videos that show three-dimensional recreations of actual neural connections in the brain. He also discusses the future direction of this work in helping to understand how early adverse experiences affect connectivity. Internship Opportunity
The Best 3 Ways to Deal With Failure (Plus 5 Painful Ones To Avoid) Are your ways of dealing with everyday failures helping or hindering? Acceptance, positive reframing and humour are the best three ways to deal with failure, according to psychological research. These three strategies make people feel the most satisfied at the end of the day. The study, published in the journal Anxiety, Stress & Coping, had 149 people keeping daily diaries for up to two weeks (Stoeber & Janssen, 2011). They reported the most irritating failure they had during the day, how they coped with it and how satisfied they felt at the end of the day. People spontaneously used all sorts of coping strategies. The results showed, though, that these three techniques left people feeling the most satisfied at the end of the day: Acceptance.Positive reframing – looking for the positives anywhere you can, perhaps by looking at what has been done rather than what hasn’t.Humour. In contrast, people who frequently used the following five common techniques felt worse at the end of the day:
Perfectionism and coping with daily failures: Positive reframing helps achieve satisfaction at the end of the day - Kent Academic Repository Stoeber, J. and Janssen, D.P. (2011) Perfectionism and coping with daily failures: Positive reframing helps achieve satisfaction at the end of the day. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 24 (5). pp. 477-497. (Full text available) Differentiating perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns, the present study examined how perfectionism predicts what coping strategies people use when dealing with failures, and how perfectionism and coping influence people’s satisfaction. A sample of 149 students completed daily reports for 3 to 14 days reporting the most bothersome failure they experienced during the day, what strategies they used to cope with the failure, and how satisfied they felt at the end of the day.
Math Play Research Research Clips The Relationship of Teacher-Child Interactions in Preschool Play to Young Children's Mathematical Abilities View a transcript of this video. Want to view this video on an iPod or iPad? Math ability in preschool is one of the best predictors of later school success--research suggests it is a better predictor than early literacy skills. This study was funded in part by the Spencer Foundation. Research credits Principal Investigators: Dr. Student Research Assistants: Christina Cammisa, Claire Fryer, Tasia Supino, Eliza Welling, Jenny Wolff, Kelly Zimmermann Video production credits Producer: Julia DeLapp Production Coordinator: Ken Measimer Production Consultant: Dr. Videographer/Editor: Sean Leser (Eastern student) Production Assistant: Amy Dillon (Eastern student) Other video resources