Bøger af Michael Griffin

Effective teaching and learning are not always intuitive. The illusion of knowledge becomes the difficulty of metacognition. Consider the illusion of encouragement. The common view that "just do the best you can" is encouraging and useful does not stand up to scrutiny. According to American psychologist and pioneer in goal-setting theory Dr Edwin Locke, "just do your best" goals consistently underperform in comparison to specific and challenging goals. The problem is: 1) it is unclear what the target is, 2) any result can fulfil the claim "I did my best", providing a ready excuse and an easy out for lack of accomplishment, and 3) it is perceived as a low expectation of student ability. Likewise, teaching that involves helping too much or too quickly discourages curiosity and creates dependency. The most common form of encouragement, praise, is often confused with feedback and is thought by some to lift self-esteem. It is effective with neither. Praise is information-less feedback, usually framed as a personal judgement, and more effective at cultivating narcissism than self-esteem. These ideas and much more are explored further in this pragmatic little book.I would not expect the reader to take my ideas seriously if they were based on my opinion alone. We all have opinions, but the opinions of researchers and field experts have more substance and weight than personal-experience opinions. Unless specified otherwise, the contents of this book are based on evidence. They are based on research. My aim is to explain complex ideas about teaching, learning, and character, in a simplicity of style that is accessible to the general reader. To do this I have drawn from the work of a broad range of educators, contemporary psychologists and motivational experts including but not limited to Csikszentmihalyi, Deci and Ryan, Dweck, Ericsson, Kohn, Hattie, Judith Locke, McGilchrist, Perkins, Pinker, Marzano, and Ritchhart. I have fused modern knowledge with the wisdom of the past including Greek philosophy and Confucian ideals. I have kept the use of jargon to a minimum. At the end of each chapter study questions are provided for reflection, and as an opportunity to extend personal learning.Metacognition is one of the magnificent joys of learning and of life itself. Metacognition is the learner's coming of age. It is the hallmark of intrinsic motivation. The diverse set of skills this word represents is essential for reaching expertise in any domain. The great thinkers Rousseau, Kant and John Locke viewed the aim of education as enabling children to think for themselves, with the subsequent aim of becoming persons of character. Metacognitive processes aim to provide an objective view of our strengths and weaknesses, self-knowledge, and blind spots. It enables freedom of the mind. Through reflection and evaluation, we understand our actions more critically and have a vision for self-improvement. We improve our learning by continually designing and redesigning our training. Some of the context examples are from my prime subject area, music education. Music serves well because expert music learners are highly metacognitive. They must be to reach the extraordinary level of skill acquisition. You are invited to cross-fertilise, compare, and contrast to your domain of interest.I hope you enjoy reading Metacognition: Teaching Children to Think and witness an increase in student engagement through its practice.Michael Griffin, January 2021.

A student guide for improving the quality of musical practice.

Aristotle's Topics is a handbook for dialectic, i.e. the exercise for philosophical debates between a questioner and a respondent. Alexander takes the Topics as a sort of handbook teaching how to defend and how attack any philosophical claim against philosophical adversaries. In book 3, Aristotle develops strategies for arguing about comparative claims, in which properties are said to belong to subjects to a greater, lesser, or equal degree. Aristotle illustrates the different argumentative patterns that can be used to establish or refute a comparative claim through one single example: whether something is more or less or equally to be chosen or to be avoided than something else. In his commentary on Topics 3, here translated for the first time into English, Alexander of Aphrodisias spells out Aristotle's text by referring to issues and examples from debates with other philosophical school (especially: the Stoics) of his time. The commentary provides new evidence for Alexander's views on the logic of comparison and is a relatively neglected source for Peripatetic ethics in late antiquity. This volume will be valuable reading for students of Aristotle and of the developments of Peripatetic logic and ethics in late antiquity.

Oliver Goldsmith (17281774) moved between the genres and geographies of enlightenment writing with considerable dexterity. As a consequence he has been characterized as a passive purveyor of enlightenment thought, a hack, a harried translator of the French enlightenment for an English audience, an ideological lackey, and a subtle ironist. In poetry, he is either a compliant pastoralist or an engaged social critic. Yet Goldsmith's career is as complex and as contradictory as the enlightenment currents across which he wrote, and there is in Goldsmith's oeuvre a set of themesincluding his opposition to the new imperialism and to glibly declared principles of libertywhich this book addresses as a manifestation of his Irishness. Michael Griffin places Goldsmith in two contexts: one is the intellectual and political culture in which he worked as a professional author living in London; the other is that of his nationality and his as yet unstudied Jacobite politics. Enlightenment in Ruins thereby reveals a body of work that is compellingly marked by tensions and transits between Irishness and Englishness, between poetic and professional imperatives, and between cultural and scientific spheres.

This book takes the long-view by analysing Islamic State's beginnings in Iraq to their involvement in the Arab Spring and through to the present day.*BR**BR*The world is watching IS's advance through the Middle East. The US risks being drawn into another war in the region despite its experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. IS are creating catastrophic waves across the region, but it is still unclear what lies behind its success. *BR**BR*Michael Griffin uncovers the nature of IS through investigating the myriad of regional players engaged in a seemingly endless power game: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Iraq, which have all contributed to the success of IS by supplying arms and funds. *BR**BR*He foregrounds the story of the uprising against President Assad of Syria, the role played by the Free Syrian Army, Islamist groups, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, the chemical weapons attacks in 2013 and the House of Commons vote not to impose a no-fly zone over the country.