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Introduce Yourself to Inquiry Institute 2009

Using your Personal Blogs on Serendip:

Jerome Bruner and Spiral Curriculum

Four key themes emerge out of the work around The Process of Education (1960: 11-16):

The role of structure in learning and how it may be made central in teaching. The approach taken should be a practical one. 'The teaching and learning of structure, rather than simply the mastery of facts and techniques, is at the center of the classic problem of transfer... If earlier learning is to render later learning easier, it must do so by providing a general picture in terms of which the relations between things encountered earlier and later are made as clear as possible' (ibid.: 12).

Review of Beauty: The Value of Values

Submitted by Anna Dela Cruz on Sun, 05/17/2009 - 1:42pm

Fredrick Turner’s book Beauty: The Value of Values offers a part philosophical, part anthropological, and part scientific understanding of beauty. To him the way humans perceive beauty is natural because beauty to us has a biological basis via culture. With the expansion of our brain came an expanded understanding of the world around us. This expansion is also responsible for our current interpretations of beauty.

Emergence 2009: Final Projects, VIII

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Emergence 2009: Final Projects, VII

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Emergence 2009: Final Projects, VI

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A Battle for Truth: Conscious Versus Subconscious in Decision-making

Submitted by Anna Dela Cruz on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 8:42am

Revered psychoanalyst and authoritative thinker of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sigmund Freud, said that the “most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness”. One aspect of Freud’s work in unlocking the secrets of the human mind dealt with the cognitive unconscious—cognitive mental processes that influence behavior without the need for active awareness. Examples of the cognitive unconscious at work include automatic behaviors such as biting one’s nails or shaking one’s leg during long periods of sitting still. In addition to habits, recent research suggests that the unconscious mind also has bearing over decision-making and in some cases, is better than conscious thinking.