In the introduction, I was struck by the section concerning values and motivations. A common phrase I hear (and use) when someone’s actions have undesired consequences is, “Well, your intentions were good!” Up until this reading, I didn’t realize how much of a crutch and excuse that phrase can be. It also made me think of a documentary we recently watched in my LDST 101 course about Whitney Young, one of the most important and unknown agent in the civil rights movement. People regarding him as a man of action and specifically, “a man that accomplished what other people were for”. In this context, while most supported the idea of civil rights (good intentions), few strategized and acted successfully on these values. I kept the story of Whitney Young’s critcial thought processes and solutions in the back of my head the entire time I read this article, and found it fascinating how it supported Dorner’s argument that “people court failure in predictable ways”.<\/p>\n
Another example this reading made me think of was the engineering design process. Having an extensive background in the field of engineering, I found myself comparing the examples of “good” and “Bad” participants in the Tanaland or Greenvale simulations to thought processes I had been taught in the past. Specifically, the Project Lead The Way (PLTW) Engineering Design Process. After each step, students are taught to question the ideas they are generating and think critically about what they are proposing. Engineering students are trained to reanalyze situations continuously and discover how smaller systems are interrelated to comprise one design. After following this system for four years, it was interesting to see how this method compared with that of\u00a0 the “mistakes of cognition” made in the examples presented.<\/p>\n
I was thoroughly shocked by Forsyth’s article revealing the correlation of bolstering student’s self-esteem and their academic performance. In my pre-k-12 career, I attended nine schools and each of them valued – to some extent- encouraging student’s to believe in themselves for the sake of improving their success in the classroom. I was never given a reason to question it until now. After reading this article, I am wondering how stereotype threat fits into this equation. If stigmatized groups do not perform well, because that is what is expected of them, then wouldn’t assuring them they are capable improve their performance? And isn’t that an example of bolstering self-esteem? Also, if “weak students may maintain self-esteem best by withdrawing effort” then why do we sometimes see these stigmatized groups (some who may have low self-esteem) overcompensating to break stereotypes?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the introduction, I was struck by the section concerning values and motivations. A common phrase I hear (and use) when someone’s actions have undesired consequences is, “Well, your intentions were good!” Up until this reading, I didn’t realize how much of a crutch and excuse that phrase can be. It also made me think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}