In this book, Bergeron demonstrates the negative emotional and pedagogical repercussions that result from American educators’ embrace of self-esteem and the dogma surrounding its acceptance. Critically interpreting the meaning of self-esteem in education, he challenges "common sense" assumptions surrounding this notion and questions the historical, political, philosophical, and pedagogical forces that have shaped this psychological construct in education. Interrogating the pedagogical practices linked to student empowerment, self-determination, and social agency in the classroom, Bergeron discusses the ways in which the promise of self-esteem has backfired, particularly for marginalized and impoverished students.

At the end of the last century, the idea of self-esteem became enormously influential. A staggering amount of psychological research and self-help literature was published, and before long was devoured by readers. Self-esteem initiatives permeated American schools. Self-esteem became the way of understanding ourselves, our personalities, our interactions with others. Nowadays, few people think much about the idea of self-esteem—but perhaps we should. Self-Esteem: An American History is the first historical study exploring the emotional politics of self-esteem in modern America. Written with verve and insight, Ian Miller’s expert analysis explores the critiques of self-help which accuse it of propping up conservative agendas by encouraging us to look solely inside ourselves to resolve life’s problems. At the same time, he reveals how African American, LGBTQ+ and feminist activists endeavored to build positive collective identities based upon self-esteem, pride and self-respect. This revelatory book will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of mental health, well-being, emotions in the United States’ unique society and culture.

This book reconstructs the foundations of developmental and educational psychology and fills an important gap in the field by arguing for a specific spatial turn so that human growth, experience and development focus not only on time but space. This regards space not simply as place. Highlighting concrete cross-cultural relational spaces of concentric and diametric spatial systems, the book argues that transition between these systems offers a new paradigm for understanding agency and inclusion in developmental and educational psychology, and for relating experiential dimensions to causal explanations. The chapters examine key themes for developing concentric spatial systemic responses in education, including school climate, bullying, violence, early school leaving prevention and students’ voices. Moreover, the book proposes an innovative framework of agency as movement between concentric and diametric spatial relations for a reconstruction of resilience. This model addresses the vital neglected issue of resistance to sheer cultural conditioning and goes beyond the foundational ideas of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, as well as Vygotsky, Skinner, Freud, Massey, Bruner, Gestalt and postmodern psychology to reinterpret them in dynamic spatial systemic terms. Written by an internationally renowned expert, this book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the areas of educational and developmental psychology, as well as related areas such as personality theory, health psychology, social work, teacher education and anthropology.

This book argues that contemporary neuroscience compliments, extends, and challenges recent and influential posthuman and new materialist accounts of the relations between rhetoric, affect, and writing pedagogy. Drawing on cutting-edge neuro-philosophy, Comstock re-thinks both historical and current relations between writing and power around questions of affect, attention, and plasticity. In considering the uses and limits of exciting new findings from the neurobiology, this volume both theorizes and offers pedagogical strategies for teaching writing in a digital age characterized by the erosion of wonder and pervasive disaffection. Ultimately, in response to recent critiques transcendental reason and subjectivity, and related calls for the increased inclusion of multi-modal and digital writing and rhetoric, Comstock argues for an embodied pedagogy that values the substantial relations between writing and pedagogical care.

What happens when teachers are removed from the equation, when we learn by ourselves or with peers? Increasingly rapid change is part of our world today and tomorrow. The need to learn and to adapt is now lifelong and ubiquitous. But are educators and educational institutions preparing today’s students for this reality? Educators and institutions choose pedagogic models, design curricula and provide instruction. However, this does not mirror the learning environments that we inhabit outside of formal education, nor does it reflect all our learning time during formal education. This text provides a data-driven picture of the independent learning experience – what occurs in the minds of learners as they negotiate learning tasks without (or with less) guidance and instruction. Cognition, distraction, embodied experience, emotion, and metacognition are central to this learning. Drawing on new empirical data, this volume focuses on university-aged learners. These are the learners who have been through our formal educational systems. Do they learn well in independent settings? Have they been prepared for this? Through an explication of this experience, this volume makes a case for how we can better prepare them for the demands of current and future learning.

Psychology can be applied to understanding a range of current issues and topics in teaching and educational practice. Starting with the question, ′what is psychology?′, and a topical overview of child and adolescent development, Stephen James Minton moves on to discuss seven areas of contemporary concern in education, showing how psychological approaches can help teachers in key areas of practice. Areas covered include: - the self, self-esteem, and self-esteem enhancement - intelligence, learning styles and educational attainment - positive teaching, co-operative learning and assertive discipline - special educational needs - preventing and countering bullying and cyber-bullying - dealing with prejudice - stress and stress management This detailed text will be vital reading for all those studying psychology and applied psychology in primary and secondary teaching degree programmes. Constant links between theory and practice also make it a valuable read for practitioners reflecting on their approach to common classroom scenarios. Stephen James Minton is a lecturer in Psychology of Education at Trinity College Dublin.

In Confidence Culture, Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks rather than entrenched social injustices hold women back. Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill draw on Foucault’s notion of technologies of self to demonstrate how “confidence culture” demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression. Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of color, the disabled, and other marginalized groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative.