Do your students occasionally seem bored? That's ok, says John Spencer. Doing tedious tasks or spending some time without stimulation can actually be great for creativity, freeing up your brain to make connections it might not otherwise have made. Spencer walks us through why our modern culture is so resistant to boredom and how we can cultivate…

The feeling of anxiety, boredom, and apathy is more prevalent in school than in the family or in the company of good friends (Olah, 1999). Positive psychology says that learning could be joyful and stress-free in schools. Seligman (2009) pointed out, that "well-being should be taught in school, even in three areas: to counterpoint depression,…

When planning and teaching, attention is generally given to cognition while the effect of mood and emotion on cognition is ignored. But students are not emotionless thinkers and the effect can make a difference to their thought. This is particularly evident when attempting to foster creative thinking. This article draws on research to describe…

Positive psychology is influencing educational policy and practice in Britain and North America. This article reveals how this psychological discourse and its offshoot school-based training programs, which stress happiness, self-improvement and well-being, align with an emergent socio-economic formation: cognitive capitalism. Three key points are…

The immersive method is a new concept of visual education that is better suited to the needs of students in contemporary post-industrial society. The features of the immersive method are: (1) it emerges from interaction with visual culture; (2) it encourages understanding of contemporary art (as an integral part of visual culture); and (3) it…

In this article, we describe a programme of qualitative research and interpretive analysis around an approach to foreign language pedagogy that aimed to develop learners' symbolic competence through experience with and examination of the signs in acts of communication. Learners were presented with the problem of visually representing the abstract…

This paper discusses George Kelly's theories concerning ways that individuals build personal constructs of reality to interpret their experiences and illustrates how these theories could apply to science education. Teachers should encourage students to express their personal constructs; views of students and teachers should be respected. (PP)

Current writings on the functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain are examined, focusing upon possible implications for improving present educational techniques. It has been generally accepted by researchers that the organizational and verbalizing processes are functions of the left cerebral hemisphere, while creative and intuitive…

This workshop module is designed to train teachers to use fantasy techniques as a means of strengthening their students' nonsexist behaviors. Workshop activities include a discussion on the rationale for using daydreams to modify behavior and attitudes and the exploration of the experience of a guided daydream. Guidelines are provided for teachers…