Peter Gray | |
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| Nationality | American |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology |
| Institutions | Boston College |
Peter Otis Gray is an American psychology researcher and scholar. He is a research professor of psychology at Boston College, and the author of an introductory psychology textbook. He is known for his work on the interaction between education and play, and for his evolutionary perspective on psychology theory.
Peter Gray grew up in the 1950s in a series of small towns in Minnesota and Wisconsin. [1] He graduated in 1962 from Cabot School in Cabot, Vermont. [2] He then majored in psychology at Columbia College in New York City and graduated magna cum laude . [2] His experiences working at camps and recreation centers in high school and college helped to shape his future academic interests in play and child development.[ citation needed ] He received his PhD in biological sciences from Rockefeller University in 1972, [3] and, in that same year, joined the Psychology Department at Boston College. [2] There he moved up the ranks from Assistant to Associate to Full Professor, serving at various times as department chair, director of the undergraduate program, and director of the graduate program. [2] [4] In 2002 he retired from his teaching position and accepted the appointment he now holds, as research professor. [2] [1]
Gray is the author of a widely used introductory psychology textbook, now in its eighth edition (joined by coauthor David Bjorklund beginning with the 7th edition). The book broke new ground when the first edition was published (in 1991) as the first general introductory psychology textbook that brought a Darwinian perspective to the entire field.[ citation needed ] He is also author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, and he writes a popular blog for Psychology Today magazine entitled "Freedom to Learn".
In 2016, Gray helped to found the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, [5] an organization which promotes self-directed education for children and teenagers as replacement for traditional schooling. [6] He served as president of the organization, stepping down in 2020. [7] In 2017, Gray helped to found Let Grow, a non-profit organization which promotes childhood independence and pushes back against the model of helicopter parenting. [8]
Carl Ransom Rogers was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy. Rogers is widely considered one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1956.
Educational psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning. The study of learning processes, from both cognitive and behavioral perspectives, allows researchers to understand individual differences in intelligence, cognitive development, affect, motivation, self-regulation, and self-concept, as well as their role in learning. The field of educational psychology relies heavily on quantitative methods, including testing and measurement, to enhance educational activities related to instructional design, classroom management, and assessment, which serve to facilitate learning processes in various educational settings across the lifespan.
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
Parenting or child rearing promotes and supports the physical, emotional, social, spiritual and cognitive development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the intricacies of raising a child and not exclusively for a biological relationship.
Edward Lee Thorndike was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work on comparative psychology and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism and helped lay the scientific foundation for educational psychology. He also worked on solving industrial problems, such as employee exams and testing.
Unschooling is an informal learning method that prioritizes learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschoolers learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Often considered a lesson- and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling, unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, under the belief that the more personal learning is, the more meaningful, well-understood, and therefore useful it is to the child. While unschooled students may occasionally take courses, unschooling questions the usefulness of standard curricula, fixed times at which learning should take place, conventional grading methods and standardized tests, forced contact with children in their own age group, the compulsion to do homework regardless of whether it helps the learner in their individual situation, the effectiveness of listening to and obeying the orders of one authority figure for several hours each day, and other features of traditional schooling.
Autodidacticism or self-education is the practice of education without the guidance of schoolmasters.
Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing innate (inborn) elements. The simplest example of an instinctive behaviour is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a corresponding clearly defined stimulus.
Kenneth Raymond Miller is an American cell biologist, molecular biologist, and Professor Emeritus of Biology at Brown University. Miller's primary research focus is the structure and function of cell membranes, especially chloroplast thylakoid membranes. Miller is a co-author of a major introductory college and high school biology textbook published by Prentice Hall since 1990.
A Sudbury school is a type of school, usually for the K-12 age range, where students have complete responsibility for their own education, and the school is run by a direct democracy in which students and staff are equal citizens. Students use their time however they wish, and learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than through coursework. There is no predetermined educational syllabus, prescriptive curriculum or standardized instruction. This is a form of democratic education. Daniel Greenberg, one of the founders of the original Sudbury Model school, writes that the two things that distinguish a Sudbury Model school are that everyone is treated equally and that there is no authority other than that granted by the consent of the governed.
Democratic education is a type of formal education that is organized democratically, so that students can manage their own learning and participate in the governance of their school. Democratic education is often specifically emancipatory, with the students' voices being equal to the teacher's.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, the pleasure principle is the instinctive seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain to satisfy biological and psychological needs. Specifically, the pleasure principle is the animating force behind the id.
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness. It was originally proposed by Sabina Spielrein in her paper "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being" in 1912, which was then taken up by Sigmund Freud in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. This concept has been translated as "opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts". In Beyond thePleasure Principle, Freud used the plural "death drives" (Todestriebe) much more frequently than the singular.
In Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis, the reality principle is the ability of the mind to assess the reality of the external world, and to act upon it accordingly, as opposed to acting according to the pleasure principle. The reality principle is the governing principle of the actions taken by the ego, after its slow development from a "pleasure-ego" into a "reality-ego".
Jan Arne Björklund is a Swedish Liberal politician. He was member of the Riksdag from 2006 to 2019, representing Stockholm County, and served as leader of the Liberals from 2007 to 2019. Björklund served as Minister for Education from 2007 to 2014, and as Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden from 2010 to 2014.
Independent study is a form of education offered by many high schools, colleges, and other educational institutions. It is sometimes referred to as directed study, and is an educational activity undertaken by an individual with little to no supervision. Typically a student and professor or teacher agree upon a topic for the student to research with guidance from the instructor for an agreed upon amount of credits. Independent studies provide a way for well-motivated students to pursue a topic of interest that does not necessarily fit into a traditional academic curriculum. They are a way for students to learn specialized material or gain research experience.
Play is a range of intrinsically motivated activities done for recreational pleasure and enjoyment. Play is commonly associated with children and juvenile-level activities, but may be engaged in at any life stage, and among other higher-functioning animals as well, most notably mammals and birds.
Anarchism has had a special interest on the issue of education from the works of William Godwin and Max Stirner onwards.
Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing is a book about the English boarding school Summerhill School by its headmaster A. S. Neill. It is known for introducing his ideas to the American public. It was published in America on November 7, 1960, by the Hart Publishing Company and later revised as Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood in 1993. Its contents are a repackaged collection from four of Neill's previous works. The foreword was written by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who distinguished between authoritarian coercion and Summerhill.
BPDFamily.com is an online support group for the family members of individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The group is one of the first "cyber" support groups to be recognized by the medical providers and receive professional referrals.
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