The term “21st–century skills” is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today’s world. What are 21st century skills and why are they important? As our world recognizes increased globalization, 21st Read more…
Reasoning is the process of thinking about things in a logical, rational way. It is considered an innate human has been formalized by fields such as l ogic, mathematics and artificial intelligence. The process of reasoning is used to make d ecisions, solve problems and evaluate things. It can be Read more…
Conceptual generalisation is an investigation whereby the researcher uses other researchers’ empirical findings in conjunction with his or her own process of conceptualisation in order to generalise and identify a pattern Generalization, in psychology, the tendency to respond in the same way to different but similar stimuli. For example, a dog conditioned to Read more…
WHAT IS CONVERGENT THINKING? Convergent thinking is a problem solving technique involving the bringing together different ideas from different participants or fields to determine a single best solution to a lucidly defined problem. In other words, this is a kind of thinking that concentrates on finding out the single best Read more…
What is Divergent Reasoning A mode of thinking that seeks to expand the set of possible and relevant answers or solutions to a problem. Its counterpart is convergent reasoning, where the goal is to reduce the space of solutions by applying evaluation and selection criteria to a pool of alternatives. WHAT Read more…
Abductive reasoning Another form of scientific reasoning that doesn’t fit in with inductive or deductive reasoning is abductive. Abductive reasoning usually starts with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the group of observations, according to Butte College. It is based on making and Read more…
Inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations. Basically, there is data, then conclusions are drawn from the data. This is called inductive logic, according to Utah State University. “In inductive inference, we go from the specific to the general. We Read more…
Deductive reasoning Deductive reasoning is a basic form of valid reasoning. Deductive reasoning, or deduction, starts out with a general statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical conclusion, according to California State University. The scientific method uses deduction to test hypotheses and theories. “In deductive inference, Read more…
Psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier observed a peculiar phenomenon in their 1967 laboratory—some dogs who had previously been given control over being electrically shocked were the same dogs who, when given an opportunity, would escape the shock in a second scenario. Other dogs that had been given no control over being Read more…
Learned helplessness: A condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. It is thought to be one of the underlying causes of depression. Learned helplessness is the belief that our own behaviour does not influence what happens Read more…