Topical Blog Week #8 (Due Thursday)

The one thing from this chapter that I found very interesting was the concept of Dewey's Laboratory school that he developed in Chicago in 1896. Dewey's idea was that school should be taught through doing and that children learn by intereacting with their environment. He believed that the school is responsible for creating an environment where the children feel safe to express themselves creatively and where they are actively encouraged to be involved in learning.
Dewey's school premise was that rural communities do a very good job at creating a sense of community within children and they would often create schools that would teach children together and they would raise that child as one of the community, everyone helping out to give that child the best that it deserved. This translated into the school setting when Dewey introduced "school communities" where children would be taught together and work together towards a common goal. This, Dewey proposed, taught children the subject they were learning as well as social skills needed to interact with others.
Before the idea of laboratory schools, children went to school simply to follow the instruction of their teachers. They were taught to memorization and common exercises, little of those exercises that would translate into practical use. This was the way it had been for as long as anyone could remember and people could hardly percieve that children could learn any other way.
The first professorship in education in the country was actually from the University of Iowa in 1873. Meaning before that time period there really was no teaching to become a teacher. If you knew the subject you were likely to be asked to teach it at one point or another. No formal education was required.
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools are still up and running today with great success. As all of us may have experienced at one point in time or another, learning concepts and acutally having them apply to everyday life is an exciting thing, a lot better, in my opinion at least, then simply memorizing everything and not being able to apply it to your own life.
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools today still use many of the ideas of Dewey in their school system. They have a section of their curriculum completely dedicated to community learning and continue to believe that the more that students are involved the better off they will be. They have a section of their curriculum that involves service learning that all students must participate in in the hopes of telling students what kind of opportunities are out there and showing them the good of being involved in many different things.
The school also offers an after school program where students are given a chance to hang out with friends and do supervised homework after school in a safe and friendly environment. This just adds to the fact that the schools can be more then just learning facts and taking tests. This after school program is a safe place for students to go so that they have another option other then maybe going out and getting themselves in trouble.

http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/data/files/gallery/HistoryBookDownloadsGallery/chapter1_3.pdf
-History of the University of Chicago lab schools and their connection with John Dewey
http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/about-lab/welcome/curriculum/community-learning/index.aspx
-An overview of the community learning section of the laboratory schools
http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/activities/lab-after-school/index.aspx
-Information about the lab after school program

Edward Titchener is an American psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wudnt in Leipzig Germany. He earned his B.A. at Oxford and his P.H.D at University of Leipzig. He began as a Psychology professor at Cornell University and later became the head of the Psychology department. He is most noted for bringing Wundt’s experimental methods to the United States, which changed Psychology to the Psychology that we see today. Titchener was a structuralist, and was very interested in conscious human experience. He showed how these human experiences could be shown in mental processes. He strongly believed that all of these processes had each: intensity, duration, and clearness. His methods were all focused from the perspectives and experiences of the experiencing individual.

Edward Titchener has three very well-known publications: Elementary Psychology; A Text Book of Psychology; Systematic Psychology: Prolegomena. All three of these publications were published between 1900 and 1930. His theory, “core-context theory of meaning”, was one that continued to show up throughout the history of psychology. Basically, the theory states that mental processes all stem from a core mental process. Many people viewed these mental processes as building blocks. Thinking about it in an easier context reveals a bit more. To me, this means that ideas can stem from each other. I believe this to be entirely true, since we grow up learning and typically learn one thing before the other. It’s basically like taking one step at a time.

His work with conscious experience was probably the most interesting for me. He liked to study experience while it was being experienced, rather than after the fact. In my eyes, this is the best approach to study experience. If something dramatic happens to me, I’d be much more likely to explain it in greater, clearer, and more accurate detail at the time it was happening, rather than 2 days later. Angry, sadness, and even happiness are all much clearer at the moment it happens. Your mind may not be clearer, but the experience itself is clearer. Moreover, your emotions that you experience during the experience are the TRUE emotions that you feel to a specific event. If you wait, chances are you will have had time to think about it, and your emotions will have a least changed slightly. For example, if you won at the casino, the amount of happiness you experience is much greater in the moment than even later in the day. Of course, you’re still happy that you won (assuming you didn’t put the money back into the machine), but it’s not the same as when it actually happens. The same goes for negative events. Your suffering after a breakup is probably at least a little less intense as it was right when the breakup happens. (Again, assuming that you ACTUALLY suffered from the breakup) Granted, with these situations there’s always the change that in the moment you felt less of the emotion as you did afterwards. I’d like to see what Titchener would say about that. For example, while breaking up, you didn’t care and thought you would be better off. Two days later, you find yourself in a deep depression missing the person with all your heart. Are the emotions you feel while you experience the event always TRUE? If that is the case, then hopefully you’d get over the deep depression, because in fact, you didn’t really care.

http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/titchener.shtml

This website gave me some background information on Titchener and his contributions to psychology.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edward_B._Titchener

This website explored his contributions even further.

http://www.nndb.com/people/958/000164466/

This website gave me a better background of his life prior to studying with Wudnt.

The topic I decided to learn more about was the history of the group known as the Experimentalists. The first meeting of the group was held at the University of Cornell in Ithaca, New York, in 1904. The group was lead by Edward Titchener, after he resigned from the American Psychological Association because he was dissatisfied with the direction it was heading. Researchers from universities including Cornell, Yale, Clark, Michigan, and Princeton attended early meetings, with Chicago and Iowa soon joining. Research papers as well as research in progress were discussed by established researchers. As the number of practicing experimental psychologists grew, so did discussions concerning the limits that should be placed on membership in the group. It was questioned whether the group should remain small to ensure a manageable series of conferences; or should it be open to all interested, practicing experimental psychologists? It was decided to keep the group small and during the early years the membership totaled around 35 individuals.

Another important aspect of the group was that it included only men. This was because Titchener wanted the group to be able to converse freely on any subject without being concerned about behaving “properly” in the presence of woman. In an attempt to dismiss the charge that Titchener was anti-female, it has been pointed out that nearly half of his graduate students were female and his first doctoral student was in fact female. However, after Titchener’s death the Experimentalists were reorganized as the Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP). After the reorganization, the Society grew in numbers and diversity of experimental interest. The group now included women, but very few were ever nominated for membership until the later part of the twentieth century. The meetings were kept brief, just one and half days of sessions, and continued their emphases on communication of ongoing research and the open exchange of ideas among active researchers.

The Society of Experimental Psychologists still remains to this day. The current membership comprises 210 individuals with expertise in areas including experimental, cognitive, perceptual, behavioral, developmental, social psychology, and neuroscience. The Society celebrated it Centennial Year in 2003 to 2004 with special meeting held at Washington University and at Cornell University – the birth place of the original Experimentalists.

http://www.sepsych.org/history_of_sep.htm
- General overview of the history of the Experimentalists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Experimental_Psychologists
- Provided a brief outline of the SEP

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/uncategorized/100-years-of-the-experimentalists.html
- Discussed the Centennial Year celebration of the Society

My topic is Edward B. Titchener’s life and accomplishments. Edward Titchener fits into the chapter, because this chapter talked about his interest in human consciousness. It told much about his works on this, and I wanted to learn more about his life, and more of what he had accomplished. Titchener was born in southern England on November 1st 1867 and died on March 8th, 1927.
He went to school at Oxford and studied philosophy and classic literature. In 1892 he got his Ph.D. Titchener’s ideas were “influenced” by the theory of volunteerism by Wundt, who he studied with when he went to Germany after he graduated with his Ph.D. This same year he was employed at Cornell teaching psychology using the structuralism technique that he believed in, and made a laboratory. He trained fifty-six doctoral students, and one of them is now a well-known woman named Margaret Floy Washburn who was the first women to receive a Ph.D. in psychology.
He published over two hundred articles and books over thirty-five years, his wife Sophie Bedlow was an artist who made the drawings for his books. Edward was the editor of Mind from 1894-1917, and was also the co-editor of the American Journal of Psychology from 1895-1925.
He made an association of Psychology. This association was called Experimentalist, and it was made in 1904 and is actually still here today called the Society of Experimental Psychologists. Edward Titchener studies the consciousness and he used the structuralism system to do this. He was also the founder of structural psychology.
According to Titchener, sensations have four properties: intensity, quality, duration, and extent. He told that there are different types of sensations, one being the auditory sensation. He used introspection to figure out the levels of consciousness. This part of his study was actually different from Wundt’s, because Titchener’s guidelines were stricter than Wundt’s.

http://web.sau.edu/waterstreetmarya/titchener.htm
Told about his accomplishments such as the association he created.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_B._Titchener
Told how he was influenced by Wundt’s theories. And talked about his consciousness.
http://geniusrevive.com/en/geniuses?pid=55&sid=405:Edward-Titchener-Founder-of-Structural-Psychology
Founder of structural psychology. His wife. Teaching life.

After reading chapter 7, I chose to learn more about Edward Thorndike. I selected him because his work on the law of effect seems to lead to Skinner’s work on operant conditioning, and this is a very important in the history of psychology. I think he was also like Skinner in that he later became interested in education, real world learning, and worked in educational psychology for many years. In many ways he started the whole field of educational psychology.

I learned that Thorndike first worked with baby chickens as subjects. He used a simple maze that he built from old books to study how long it took them to learn their way out of the maze. He did this work in the basement of William James’ home. (I thought this was interesting because it shows how supportive James was. Thorndike had been asked to leave his rented place because of the chickens.) Later Thorndike did his better known work with the cats in the puzzle box. I read that still later he worked with monkeys when he moved to Columbia University – where once again he got in trouble with his landlady. He wrote a book about his work and called it Animal Intelligence. I learned that this was also the sample title that George Romanes had used for his book about animal behavior, but his studies were all using the anecdotal method. He just reported stories of animals doing clever things.

The studies Thorndike wrote about were based on his experiments and they introduced the idea of the law of effect and another law that he had called the law of exercise. The law of effect said that pleasant consequences will strength stimulus response connections (unpleasant ones will weaken them). The law of exercise said that the more often the response occurs, the stronger it will become. (Practice makes perfect.) These seem like two of the most important ideas in the psychology of learning. And it is easy to see how you get from Thorndike’s Law to Skinner’s operant conditioning.

One thing that also makes Thorndike’s work like Skinner’s is that his graph is the learning behavior of an individual cat (in our book it is number 10). So Thorndike didn’t average the learning curves, he showed the learning behavior in the cat as it changed over time.

Our book didn’t really say much about Thorndike’s development of educational psychology, even though that is what he did for most of his life. He worked at Columbia Teacher’s College and studied how children learn school subjects. He developed different tests to measure what children had learned. (One of these educational tests was of handwriting.) He also developed a dictionary of words that junior high students should know. It is still used today. He believed in a researched based curriculum. He did not think that learning for learning’s sake, such as learning the Greek language, was helpful. He helped to develop intelligence tests and, through those, pointed out that children differed in their innate abilities. He studied how children learn arithmetic and made suggestions for improving the school curriculum in this area and many others. He later studied adult learning and had a great influence on how we think about adults and learning in later life.

I think Thorndike is a good model for any psychology student. He believed strongly in experimentation as a way to understand people (especially children). He also believed we could learn from animal studies. He thought applying psychology to the real world was important and that the school system was one of the best laboratories that we have for studying learning.

Websites used:

http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/6660/skindik.htm
This article discusses Skinner and Thorndike's Conditioning Theory

http://www.kdp.org/meetourlaureates/laureates/edwardthorndike.php
This is a very good website centering on Thorndike and his influence on the field of educational psychology.

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
This is a biography of Thorndike focusing on his work in psychology.

I decided to do more research on John Dewey’s views on education. Chapter seven expresses the importance that Dewey put on students being active learners. This is something that I find interest in because I can relate to his views. I think that physically experiencing knowledge is often a better way to learn about something. Our education system can sometimes feel like a long, dragged out repetition of the basics and seeing how the ones being taught are young and not yet matured, it can be hard for kids to maintain focus or motivation. John Dewey thought along the same lines and develops a progressive movement in American education. Dewey was a functional psychologist that advocated democracy considering not just the fundamental element of education in the schools, but also the element of civil societies. Deeper into the schools, Dewey believed in progressive education which was a movement that would provide an alternative to the traditional test-oriented curriculum being practiced. He argued that the process of learning is social and interactive, so schools should then be social institutions. Something interesting that I read was that Dewey thought that students should have the opportunity to take a part in their own learning. This is interesting for me because when I think of the education process, I think of one single individual lecturing to a group of many children all at once. To me, that doesn’t sound like kids have the opportunity to take part in their learning, they instead have to obey rules and answer questions with a strict right or wrong answer produced by someone else. He builds off of that thought of mine by even discussing how elders can help but also hurt children because of how helpless and cannot formulate their grievances collectively. A teacher or instructor should approach each student individually and a take notice of the uniquessness and different learning styles of each child. People are genetically and biologically built differently, so it is no shock that they also learn differently; this is what Dewey wanted to education system to build off of. Something that John Dewey stresses, that really isn’t the case in our education system, is the importance for schools to also be a place to learn how to live. Getting an education is something that takes up so much of our time and learning is a never ending process, but yet the only purpose that schools serve for is a place to gain content knowledge. This is a good way to look at active learning by comparing it to just ‘learning the content’ and not experiencing it. Dewey argues that by just focusing on the subject matter in school, kids aren’t allowed to reach their full potential by deepening their learning through relating past experiences. The overall broad purpose of education for John Dewey was social and how people can become a more effective, democratic society. Life is something that affects all age groups, so children are just as much exposed to everyday situations just as much as elder people are. The environment is always changing and people need to be able to handle or adapt to the demanding forces being thrown at them. Dewey believed that the students thrive in environments that allow them to experience and interact with the curriculum and during the process they can learn about life. In conclusion, there needs to be a balance between involving the different interests of students and still deliver knowledge because child-centered methods of education are also detrimental.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/works/1960/x03.htm
children being helpless/ elders helping and hurting/ social aspects of education

http://wilderdom.com/experiential/ExperientialDewey.html
individuality and uniqueness of each child/ social aspects of education

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey
background of John Dewey/ progressive movement of education

After reading chapter 7, I really wanted to find more information on the Thorndike Puzzle Box. I found an amazing psychology experiment used to show a transfer escape mechanism.

The video I found was a great visual example of Thorndike’s main experiment. The German Shepherd dog had multiple trials escaping a “homemade” puzzle box. The dog was first introduced to the lever that was located on one side of the cage, with treats. Then students of a psychology class watched as the dog proceeded to be confused of his surroundings and finally open the cage after a few minutes. The students then continued to repeat the process without the treat, and dog finally got down to a few seconds to escape the cage. The experiment video shows that the dog used an escape learning mechanism to “quicken” the process of opening the cage. Thorndike’s puzzle boxes with cats, performed the same results. The cats learned faster ways to escape the more trials Thorndike prepared.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-g2OmRXb0g

The second resource I found was context out of the book Animal Intelligence: Experimental Studies. Thorndike was very proud of his animal intelligence of the puzzle box experiment, and knew his discovery would make it big. A quote Thorndike said was “my theory is a beauty,” which made me wonder if Thorndike knew his study would succeed? It was interesting to read in the passage that the puzzle box was published only four months after the study was performed. After Thorndike did the famous puzzle box study, he continued to work with animals such as fish. Thorndike’s experiments have made a big impact on Animal Intelligence in psychology and also make us understand some human learning as well. I really enjoyed reading a few pages of this book on experimental studies on animal intelligence.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Go8XozILUJYC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=thorndike+animal+learning&ots=-lbnAji4zL&sig=u0R4e7DkiP87v058V67lB5HzH2M#v=onepage&q=thorndike%20animal%20learning&f=false

The third resource that I found contributed to the thoughts and life of Thorndike during the puzzle box period. Thorndike’s background really helped me understand why he wanted to work on animal intelligence. Thorndike left Harvard for Columbia to work on a theory of “instinct.” The background of Thorndike’s puzzle box is interesting because the boxes are no longer available, but only photographs sent to Robert Yerkes. Even though Thorndike’s study was so popular, the boxes were not saved for further experiments. Thorndike spent his time on this puzzle box theory, and really made an impact in the history of animal intelligence today. The short insert to this article simply shows Thorndike’s passion for his animal theory.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1520-6696%28197204%298:2%3C159::AID-JHBS2300080202%3E3.0.CO;2-P/abstract;jsessionid=73F1890530B0395D038C598DFC1B3CF5.d03t02

The topic of interest of Thorndike and his experiment relates to the chapter on transfer learning escape mechanism in the section of Puzzle Boxes, on page 233 of edition 3. Thorndike’s experiment was used to gain knowledge on instincts and animal learning behaviors, which applies to many aspects of chapter 7.

After finding these three resources on Thorndike, I realized that there are many experiments that could be used based off of the puzzle boxes. I found that it was hard to understand that many of the animals were “starved” or abused, but I think in modern psychology, we can work around “PETA” issues. I definitely think it would be very fun to do a research project on zoology or with animals. I have always had a strong passion for 4 legged furry creatures, and loved learning about the escape mechanisms of cats and other animals.

The topic I chose to write about is progressive education. This relates to what we are learning about, first, because two of the psychologists we have previously discussed have researched and written about this topic. These two researchers are John Locke and John Dewey. This also relates because this way of teaching implements elements of psychology into the school system. It is also a series of concepts that require more in-depth thinking than our school system now.
Progressive education has been a topic of discussion for many years, and can be traced back to the works of John Locke in the late 17th century. More recently, however, the progressive education movement began in the late nineteenth century, and continues to evolve into different forms in the present day. The term “progressive” was used to distinguish this form of education from the current curriculum in the school systems. Dewey published his work of progressive education in School Journal in 1897. He divided his theory into 5 separate standpoints: What Education is, What the School is, The Subject- Matter of Education, The Nature of Method, The School and Social Progress. Dewey is known as the most famous spokesperson of progressive education in the United States. Today, most progressive education programs have these characteristics (to name a few): emphasis on learning by doing (hands-on approach), integration of entrepreneurship into education, highly personalized education accounting for each individual’s personal goals, and emphasis on lifelong learning and social skills. Throughout the many progressive schools across the country, there are several differences in the programs that each school implements. However, there are several similarities in these schools, as well. These are: the curriculum is more flexible, the curriculum is more focused around student interest, teachers encourage students to use a variety of techniques to learn and learn by discovery, and using community resources and encouraging service-learning projects. Our society feels that our education system and its current curriculum is appropriate for our students today. However, looking at other developed nations and how well their education systems are progressing; we may want to rethink our strategies. By reforming our education system and adopting a more progressive education style, we will form a more holistic approach which centers on student’s interests and needs. A collection of research has demonstrated that when students are able to spend more time thinking about ideas, and less time memorizing facts and skills, the students are not only likely to enjoy what they are doing, but do it better as well. Students also do better when they are directed to help guide their own learning. In my opinion, progressive education is just more appealing; but it is more productive. My opinion is not the only like it, but it takes a lot of work to switch to a more progressive school system. For example, not only are the students the main subject, but teachers have to feel more comfortable about giving the students more freedom to learn what they want. And then, of course, you have the parents who will always have their fair share of opinion. All in all, I believe progressive education is the way to go, and I especially liked learning more about it!
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/progressive.htm Very helpful! Lots of info on all aspects of progressive education
http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/articles/proged.html Gave a brief overview of progressive ed
http://www.albany.edu/~dkw42/s2_dewey_progr.html Shared information about progressive ed but also on John Dewey and his work in the field

I wanted to look into the University of Chicago and see what they are currently up to as far as psychology goes. I lived in Chicago and had heard of their business school and Einstein but never of their psychology program but I was not studying psychology then so I wanted to see why. I wanted to know how they are ranked, are they doing important new research, do they have any famous employees? I was frustrated to find I did not gather much more than was on the University’s website. No news articles or anything else really. I am guessing that since I did not find a lot the psych department there has passed its prime.

The University of Chicago’s Psychology Department has four areas of study/research: Cognition, Developmental Psychology, Integrative Neuroscience and Social Psychology. From the website “Originally founded as the Laboratory of Psychology in 1893, the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago has been for a century a leading center of scholarship, research and teaching in psychology and related fields. Among its distinguished faculty and students have been James Rowland Angell, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism, L. L. Thurstone, a pioneer in psychological measurement, and Roger Sperry, Nobel Prize winner for his work in cerebral lateralization.” The website emphasizes its interdisciplinary approach to learning.

Depending on the source, the University of Chicago’s Psychology program is ranked around # 23 while their Economics department is #1. Stanford is supposed to be number one in psychology, number two UC Berkley and Harvard is 3rd. So it seems like the university is not quite as important as it was in Dewey’s time and that other schools have taken over. As far as cost I had trouble understanding if it was expensive compared with other universities but this is what I found:

Five-year Fellowships: Full tuition, University student health insurance, an annual combination of stipend and teaching assignments of at least $22,000, and two summer grants of $3,000 each, disbursed over the five years of the award.
Two-year tuition scholarships/three-year fellowships: Full tuition and University student health insurance for the first two years; for years three through five, full tuition and University student health insurance, an annual combination of stipend and teaching assignments of at least $22,000, and one summer grant of $3,000, disbursed over years three through five.

“The Social Psychology Program at The University of Chicago has a rich history that has always emphasized innovative conceptual analyses of complex social issues. The first course in Social Psychology (entitled "Contemporary Social Psychology") was taught at the University of Chicago by George Herbert Mead in 1900. The lead article in Volume 1, Number 1, of the Psychological Bulletin, which appeared in January 15, 1914, was entitled "The Chicago School" by William James, in which he reviewed the work of John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, James Rowland Angell, and A. W. Moore. In 1965, the first meeting of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) was held at the University of Chicago, and SESP was hosted again by the Social Psychology Program at the University of Chicago in 2007. Over the years, the program has grown from a small university committee to an interdivisional graduate training program administered in the Department of Psychology.”

In the end I really did not learn a whole lot about the current program and if it is still respected or worth the money. Their website was not laid out very nicely compared to others, better than UNI’s but not what I expected. I kind of feel like I did all of this searching for nothing.

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/university-of-chicago-144050
School ranking

http://www.usnewsuniversitydirectory.com/graduate-schools/social-sciences-humanities/psychology.aspx?page=2
Ranking

http://psychology.uchicago.edu/about/index.shtml
Department Overview

https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/costs/affording_education.shtml
Cost evaulaion

The topic I am choosing to write about is over puzzle box learning. This fits into the chapter because it is a major factor in the section on Thorndike. The reason I am interested in puzzle box learning is because it is pretty much the precursor to operant conditioning and the Skinner box. I have learned about the Skinner box in many of my classes, but this is the first time I have heard of Thorndike using a puzzle box with cats. Since Thorndike came before Skinner I am interested to see how puzzle box learning started.

Thorndike was not only the first psychologist to use the puzzle box for studying learning he was also one of the first psychologists to do studies on animals not humans. Through Thorndike’s studies with cats he came up with the Law of Effect. This is basically that any behavior that is rewarded is likely to be repeated. How he came across this law was through repeated puzzle box experiments with cats. A hungry cat would be put inside a puzzle box and food would be placed outside the box. Thorndike would them time how long it took the cat to escape form the puzzle box, by pushing a lever. Once the cat escaped Thorndike would take the cat and put it back into the puzzle box and time to see how long it took the second time. He would repeat this process over and over again and what he found was the more times the cat was in the puzzle box the quicker it would escape. Basically the cat learned that by pushing the lever it could get out of the puzzle box and gain access to the food. This is the idea of the Law of effects. Similarly, Skinner used an operant conditioning chamber to study operant and classical conditioning. He too used animals for his study, except instead of cats he primarily used pigeons. Similar to Thorndike’s puzzle box Skinners operant conditioning chambers would provide rewards to the animals for correctly performing different tasks. While Skinner is given credit for inventing the operant conditioning chamber I think that Thorndike, even though his boxes were crudely built, was the founder of using puzzle boxes to study learning in animals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thorndike
-This is where I learned of some of Thorndike’s history.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/edward-thorndike.html
-This is where I found an explanation of the experiments Thorndike performed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
-This is where I learned about Skinner and the operant conditioning chamber.

The topic I wanted to research more was the life and career of Edward L. Thorndike. He was born on August 31, 1874 in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. He was the son of a Methodist minister, he grew up in Massachusetts. When he was first introduced to psychology, Thorndike didn’t like it. It wasn’t until he read William James’ The Principles of Psychology that he became interested in the subject. He first attended Wesleyan University earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1895. Then, he enrolled at Harvard University to study English and French University. While he was there, he took a course taught by William James, which led to him changing his major to psychology soon after. However, he didn’t graduate from Harvard. He was invited to study at Columbia University by James Cattell. This is where his work on animal research really picked up. His work was interesting, because he didn’t only use chicks. Rather, he began to test cats and dogs, which made me become very interested in researching what other animals had been used to for intelligence testing.
Along with birds, mice, cats, and dogs, animals like chimpanzees, monkeys, and dolphins have been issued some kind of intelligence test. However, one particular study focused on the intelligence testing on elephants. During the study, the experimenters found that elephants cooperate very well and understand the logic behind teamwork. With their great performance in the experiment, scientists now believe their intelligence level is at least equal to chimpanzees and dolphins, which are considered two of the most intelligent animals.
Anyways, once he was done testing the intelligence of different animals, he returned to studying Educational Psychology, which was his first interest in the field. He graduated from Columbia in 1898. He then went on to work at the College for Women of Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio in 1899. In 1900, he married Elizabeth Moulton. Shortly after, he accepted a job as a psychology professor at the Teachers College at Columbia University, and he remained there for the remainder of his career. His focus of study was on human learning, education, and mental testing.
Thorndike is best known for his theory called the law of effect. This came from his research on how cats learned how to escape from the various puzzle boxes he created. He believed that successful outcomes are more likely to occur in the future at a quicker rate. Conversely, he believed failed attempts were less likely to occur again. Through all of his work, he’s strongly associated with functionalism. He’s often referred to as the father of modern day educational psychology. In 1912, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association. In 1917, he was one of the first psychologists admitted to the National Academy of Sciences. He was also elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1934. He retired from Columbia University in 1939, and he died on August 9, 1949.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
-Background info on Thorndike
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesmz/p/edward-thorndike.htm
-More info on Thorndike
http://news.discovery.com/animals/elephants-intelligence-test-110307.html
-Info on other animals being used for intelligence tests

After reading chapter seven, I decided that I was interested in learning a little bit more about Harvey Carr. I thought he sounded like a young man with a lot of ambition and a lot of enthusiasm about his theories and experience in the field of psychology. He was especially interested, and made quite a contribution to, mazes.
Harvey Carr was born on April 30th 1873 on a farm in Indiana. It was difficult to find a lot of details of his early life. But when he was old enough he went on to the DePauw University and then to the University of Colorado and studied psychology for his undergraduate. He worked with and under many great psychologists at that time including Arthur Allen, John Watson, John Dewey, and James Angell. He is known mostly for his work with functionalism. Between 1907 and 1908 Carr and good friend Watson worked on the kerplunk experiment. This experiment showed how voluntary motor responses could be conditioned by using trained rats and mazes. The rats would be trained to run the maze straight through to read the food at the end of the alleyway. The rats would get faster every time they ran the maze and more accurate at finding the food. After a certain amount of time the alleyway was shortened and the food was moved closer. The rats would still run at full speed to the end of the alley and at times even run passed the food, smacking their heads into the wall, and therefore creating the “kerplunk” sound.
Harvey wrote once to a friends that he ranked his achievements as low and did not suspect that he would be remembered for much in the field of psychology once he was long gone. He was wrong about that, for after he was finished at the university of Chicago, leading the psychology department, he continued to teach until his eighties and continued to write until he was ninety-one. He was president of the American psychological association in 1926 and advisory editor for the Journal of Experimental Psychology. He contributed considerable to the psychology program at the University of Chicago and loved the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_A._Carr
http://www.igs.net/~pballan/Carr.htm
http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Carr/Carr_1961.html

The topic I chose to look into further was John Dewey and progressive education. The concept of progressive education had two important parts: respect for diversity and the development of critical, socially engaged intelligence. Respect for diversity focused more on the individual and their abilities, interests, needs and cultural identity. Critically, socially engaged intelligence was allowing individuals to comprehend and be involved in the community to benefit the community in a good way. Dewey, known as the “father of Progressive education”, tested ideas he came up with after seeing the decrease in opportunities for young adults for democratic participation at his laboratory school at the University of Chicago. Dewey worked with colleagues Ella Flagg Young and Granville Stanley Hall on child-centeredness. In their minds, childhood was a time for innocence, goodness, and piety that was not in the case of most adults’ lives. They branched off the ideas of Friedrich Froebel and Johann Pestaloozi which was about the child’s interests other than just subject matter. Dewey very much focused on the child’s needs and interests to draw them into learning by doing more hands-on educating. He believed we learn by what we do. In his book The School and Society Dewey commented on how flawed our schools are because their requirements changed through different centuries which kept them trying to fill certain needs at certain times. He tried to fight for a more universal strategy to education and letting the students use their minds creatively and be guided by teachers rather than taught. Though Dewey’s movement wasn’t very recognized once we came into the 1950s, his ideas are still being revisited by educators and in school systems today.

http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/articles/proged.html
-this source showed the beginnings of progressive education and the whole reasoning behind it along with Dewey’s process in the progressive era.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/works/1960/x03.htm
-this source talked a lot about Dewey’s involvement with the workings of changing education from an early age and providing his own quotes on the topic.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/progressive_education.aspx
-this source emphasized on the progressive era as a whole and showed how Dewey became the most known figure in educational progressivism.

John Dewey was the most interesting person I read about in this last chapter. I chose to learn more about him as he had a wide variety of respectable accomplishments. I was particularly interested in his work with women’s suffrage and unions. I chose to look more at Dewey and his life and beliefs as they lead up to his work with education and the school system. This fits in the chapter as we are moving from the discussion of social Darwinism and the evolution of our intelligence or “fit” physically, mentally, and intellectually to intelligence discussions in the chapters to come. Dewey is a nice transitional point for these topics and he his education reform ideas were discussed in this chapter.

I am interested in this topic as I believe that it could potentially help to reform or at least improve upon certain aspects of our current education system. Dewey had many liberal ideas. As I stated above, I was originally interested in Dewey for his civil views. I thought it was interesting that the chapter mentioned his personal and political views. It’s interesting that the author believed that this was important to mention. While looking at more information about Dewey I have found that there is some connection between his social views and educational proposition. Dewey was a democratic advocate and he considered civil society when he plotted the reconstruction of education styles. He encouraging public opinion and civil education and involvement with communication be included in the education systems.

Dewey also wanted virtues to be the central theme of civic education. He saw political power and forethought as important aspects of his hands-on education plan. In Dewey’s opinion, education should look at personal development as well as free time interactions with social groups. He wanted to look at creating good people who were well educated. I was very interested to find out how much Dewey really looked at civil education. Not only did he talk about “hands-on” education which was emphasized in the chapter, but he was also a huge advocate for civic involvement. He wanted to get rid of the rigid education systems of the time and be progressive with learning. Interactive learning was of top priority to Dewey as he started a school in Chicago where he tried to find out the best way to teach children and maximize their learning. I enjoyed learning about Dewey’s civic relationship and his educational views. I also found the relationship between the two topics interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey -talked about Dewey’s civil interest and his school structures.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civic-education/ -discussed the matching of virtues in combinations with civic education and individualized learning.
http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/articles/proged.html -Dewey’s progressive education proposition.

A concept within this chapter that I wanted to look further into was the system of social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is basically applying Darwin’s and evolutionary theories to the context of our social world and political foundations. Herbert Spencer was the founder of social Darwinism as well as the term “survival of the fittest.” He had taken Darwin’s theory of evolution and used it to explain how that also applies to societies, and how “only the strong survive.”
Just like animals adapted to their environment to stay alive, the wealthier people within societies had adapted socially and economically while the people on the lower end of the socio-economic status did not. He also had argued that while these strong were adapted better it was done at the expense of the weakly adapted members, but that it was legitimate because it “happened in nature every day.” Extreme social Darwinists also believed that it wasn’t right to help out the weaker, less wealthy members of society because it promotes survival for those that were unfit and should basically be weeded out of society and that progression is carried out through competition of opposite S.E.S. levels
Social Darwinism was rooted during a time where the dominant race was white, European and that this was they should rightfully rule over all people because they were the most advanced. This belief played a helping hand in such actions of genocide like the Holocaust. The Nazi’s instead were helping clean out the weaker races instead of having them decrease naturally like the theory implies, proving how dangerous this theory can really be. This correlation of social Darwinism and WWII is also what sparked my interest in this topic. I have always loved learning about WWII and the Holocaust, and it was interesting how a topic within this class was an underlying reason for its occurrence.
This topic relates to the chapter because it is an element of the functionalist perspective. Social Darwinism examines how various people of the society operate and the functions that they need to serve to keep them alive; and it analyzes how and which individuals adapt to the progressing changes of society.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/eh4.shtml

Information on Herbert Spencer and beliefs of social Darwinism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism
Defining social Darwinism

http://www.allaboutscience.org/what-is-social-darwinism-faq.htm

Racial implications of social Darwinism and relation to WWII