Book Review on "Mindsight: Transform Your Brain with the New Science of Kindness by Daniel Siegel"
In “Mindsight: Transform Your Brain with the New Science of Kindness”, the author Daniel Siegel, a Harvard educated clinical Professor of Psychiatry, emphasises the need to integrate cognitive and emotional functions across various part of the brain along with memory types such as implicit and explicit in order to develop healthy minds with a MINDSIGHT or with higher levels of consciousness/wisdom/human development. Without such processes of integration that are well supported by the latest neuroscientific research, individuals tend to develop negative psychological conditions, become sick or would not develop to their full potential. The key neuroscientific concepts behind the above integrative processes are neuroplasticity and epigenetics that allow us to train our minds based on appropriate environmental stimuli. Professor Siegel has given some classic examples (using real counselling cases) of how mindfulness practices can be used to develop healthier minds through the processes of integration mentioned above. He has always used these therapeutic mindfulness practices as more lasting remedies ahead of alternative approaches such as prescribed drugs that usually suppress symptoms while on medication (along with any negative side-effects). The therapeutic practices he used were essentially based on developing critical characteristics of self-awareness and self-regulation. When these skills are practised and developed, individuals become more empathic and compassionate by extending integrative processes from individual to collective lives leading to harmonious and sustainable societies, following the concepts of interpersonal neurobiology.
As an educator, I am fascinated to realise the ways we can apply the integrative human development concepts highlighted by Professor Siegel to generic teaching-learning environments/classrooms to enable individuals to achieve enhanced learning, creativity and wisdom. By emphasising on these mind integration practices, we as educators can focus on the much needed “whole person” or “holistic” development of learners. Linking any new concepts or contents introduced to as many autobiographical memories of the learners and transforming their implicit memories to explicit ones using an appropriate pace following mindfulness concepts would be some critical pedagogical practices we have to engage. Similarly, we should use open-ended questions as well as reflective journaling practices for mindfully retrieving learners’ idiosyncratic and creative ideas for assessing them for their learning as well as in holistic human development. Such assessment would yield more accurate and lasting evaluations of the level “whole person development”, which can be used as a metric for further developments along the same lines, leading to individual productivity, resilience and happiness in general. Interestingly and encouragingly, Professor Siegel has put forth how narrowly focused education systems (focusing on a disintegrated narrower set of skills) existed at the time he was a student have started to improve with a realisation to value broader “whole person” development approaches. The book on "Mindsight", by Professor Siegel gives some highly useful insights and guidance to educational professionals including policy-makers to direct our pedagogical practices and education systems towards more evidence-based and much-needed learner transformation practices and systems. Such changes will help us to develop more harmonious and sustainable societies.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R88Q31N50JNFD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
https://www.amazon.com/review/R88Q31N50JNFD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
The best and more powerful effect of the educational process is not based on evidence.
Dear professor Chandana,
I find very helpful your synthesis about the book. Did you try to apply any techniques with teachers? I have been work with teacher professional developement using diaries and I need to find something to help teacher to reflexing about your diary.
The learning context must combine articulation of the concept to be learned, the creation of an experience that challenges the person to work through the concept to achieve a goal, and the assistance of the teacher to debrief the learner about how the experience affected the person personally, and how it related to the concept. Refer to the book, "The Person of the Therapist Training Model: Mastering the Use of Self,: Routledge (2016).
Dear Dilmeire
I have applied the concepts described only in a limited way for teacher education. But journaling is an important and reliable assessment tool in any teaching-learning environment. It essentially assesses learners' reflective and/or self-awareness capacities which are very important in personal growth and human development processes leading to creativity/wisdom.
Dear professors Chandana and Dilmeire,
Hello! I belong to an inter-university research project “Letramento do Professor” (Teachers' literacy) interested in teacher's identity construction. In my doctorate in Applied Linguistics I researched about it and found out some linguistic features in students' diaries that show they are in process of professional construction. As instrument, Dr. Chandara, I used learning diaries, not autobiography diaries. My thesis is in RG, in Portuguese. Last week I prepared slides to a presentation about this theme - attached below the beginning in English; the whole in Portuguese. My thesis had as theoretical foundation the works of Bakhtin, which allows us a discursive approach to data analysis as well as the vygotskian work as far cognition and affection are concerned; the identity movements of identity construction were taken from Holland and al. (1998).
Also, my university research group "Interação, linguagens e (multi-)letramentos do professor" (Interaction, languages/midiums and teachers' (multi)literacy) did some further research. In this second research we focused on affective and cognitive traits present in learning diaries registering their process of learning and developing in academic practices (several genres) alongside with a change in teacher practice. The results were published in a book and in articles here in Brasil. I am translating one article into English so to publish it abroad (if you have any suggestion, I will be pleased to have international nominations!).
In case you want to talk with me, please, let me know. I will be pleased to share my research data and results with you.
Thank you!
Eveline
Dear Eveline
Thanks for letting us know about your work. I look forward to reading the English translations of your work.
Regards
Chandana
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