Article one: COGNITIVE diffusion versus thought DISTRACTIONIN THE MITIGATION OF LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
This article explores the cause of learning helplessness which is negative unwanted thoughts and how this can be rectified through the use of cognitive defusion (Hooper and Louise 209). This article focuses on the psychological approach of learned helplessness. According to research, avoidance or unpleasant psychological events are maladaptive. Cognitive diffusion helps deal with the negative thoughts without employing maladaptive strategies. Over the last years, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a cognitive behaviour that has been adopted to deal with negative psychological contents. These contents are the barriers that prevent humans from achieving what they want. When negative thought is replaced with positive thoughts, one is able to do what they think they cannot do. It is crucial to note that trying to change these negative thoughts can cause them to increase.
Cognitive diffusion involves making the negative thoughts less powerful through teaching clients to stay away from these kinds of thoughts. ACT clinicians help the clients to defuse the negative thoughts
through seeing them as mere thoughts other than giving them a literal meaning. A word-repetitive exercise is used to help the clients to lose the semantic meaning of the words. The management of negative thoughts can involve the use of diffusion, thought distraction and thought control (Hooper and Louise 210). The comparison of the three strategies indicated that division instruction had the greatest impact on reducing the believability of the negative thoughts and the distress related to the thoughts.
This article also looks at a study that was done to show the impact of thought deficient as compared to the diffusion, distraction, and control groups. The defusion group was given a defusion instruction; the thought distraction group was given a thought distraction instruction and the control group was not given any treatment (Hooper and Louise 215). The effectiveness of the two strategies was then analysed in handling the psychological content which is learned helplessness. The study showed that the participants who were given the diffusion treatment performed better than the group that received the though distraction. The defusion-based strategies indicated positive effects in dealing with learned helplessness. The length of the defusion instruction also increases the compliance in these clients. The longer defusion instructions are also more credible to the clients. These strategies also have limitations. These limitations include lack of treatment adherence and treatment integrity. This article also notes that it will be necessary for future research to include a post-task assessment of adherence so as to enhance the internal validity of the study.
Article two: THE EFFECT OF LEARNED HELPLESSNESS TO THE SUCCESS
This article defines learned helplessness as a state whereby the mental situation of a person not being able to control the events and actions in their life as a result of negative thoughts (Odabasi 125).The mental ability of a person who experiences uncontrollable cases is affected. Learned helplessness occurs when one interprets an event as unachievable mentally and this is then translated into their behaviour. This effect determines one’s success or failure. Behaviourists taken the perspective that learning occurs as a result of observing behaviour. This perspective also argues that during the learning process, a person reacts to certain stimuli, and these results to behaviour (Odabasi 125).
The cognitive perspective argues that cognitive development consists of thinking, memory, and language. Cognitive development is realized though recognizing the schemes that occur in the mind, absorbing the new items in these schemes, absorbing them, and adapting them. This article address learned helplessness from the behaviourist and cognitive perspectives. This study also relates one’s success and learned helplessness. The other factors that have been identified to affect a person’s success in this study are sex and economic situation. For example, girls have a higher anxiety rate than boys because of their emotional behaviour. In addition to this, anxiety is also higher among lower and middle classes. The study also notes that in situations where there was not emotion mode, the girls had a higher average mark than the boys. Low anxiety levels have therefore been associated with positive success (Odabasi 129).
The findings of the study conclude that the expectations of failure due to previous learning can lead to failures in various scales. This expectation of failure is seen to be a cognitive mistake, since some of the situations can be controlled to prevent the failure (Odabasi 132). The person, therefore, does not use three or even see the skills that he has that he can use to succeed. Learned helplessness is therefore related to success. Success in this article is the ability of one using the necessary skills, energy, and time in the right way. A person maintains a failure position due to past experiences resulting to learned helplessness since they do nothing to prevent another failure. This study concluded that a person’s success is closely related to the learned helplessness. Learned helplessness also affects exam anxiety. The cognitive and behavioural processes of a person interact to determine their success or failure.
The Influence of Teachers’ Perceived Self-Efficacy and Role Impact on their Preferences in Adopting Strategies to Resolve Conflict Situations with Students
Conflicts between teachers and teachers are common in schools and they occur naturally (Pinchevsky and Ronit 111). The study in this article looks at the impact of the teacher empowerment-perceived self efficacy and role impact of their choices in implementing strategies that resolve conflicts situations with students. The teacher’s perceptions of self-efficacy indicated the ability of the teachers to be willing to use conflicts, solving styles such as integrating, obliging, compromising, and avoiding. On the other side, the perceptions of real impact do not encourage the use of the named conflict-solving styles. In addition, the latter adopts a dominating style that is likely to fuel conflicts. The style that the teachers use to resolve conflicts affects their relationship with the students and also affects the outcomes of the educational process (Pinchevsky and Ronit 111).
According to this study, the high concern for others reflects of a student-centred approach while the low concern for other reflects a teacher-centred approach at schools (Pinchevsky and Ronit 120). The teacher empowerment-self-efficacy and role-impact have an opposite influence on the choices of the teachers when adopting the conflict-solving approaches. The first dimension encourages the use of beneficial conflict-solving styles in the schools, while the latter encourages the use of the dominating style. This study shows the importance of the two dimensions and how they can help teachers in selecting the approach they use in dealing with conflicts. The findings in this study also help principals and the school administrations in to assist teacher to face the fact that conflicts exist and they should be dealt with appropriately.
Works cited
sHooper, Nic, and Louise McHugh. "Cognitive Defusion Versus Thought Distraction In The Mitigation Of Learned Helplessness." Psychological Record 63.1 (2013): 209. Publisher Provided Full Text Searching File. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
Odabasi, Battal. "The Effect Of Learned Helplessness To The Success." International Journal Of Academic Research 5.4 (2013): 125-133. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
Pinchevsky, Natalia, and Ronit Bogler. "The Influence Of Teachers' Perceived Self-Efficacy And Role Impact On Their Preferences In Adopting Strategies To Resolve Conflict Situations With Students." International Studies In Educational Administration (Commonwealth Council For Educational Administration & Management (CCEAM)) 42.2 (2014): 111-125. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
