An Examination of Mental Time Travel and Its Role in the Development of Foresightful/Prudential Intellect
| atmire.migration.oldid | 3666 | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Davis, Brent | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Shapiro, Bonnie | |
| dc.contributor.author | Parlar, Ugur | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2015-09-24T17:47:08Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2015-11-20T08:00:41Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2015-09-24 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2015 | en |
| dc.description.abstract | Mental time travel (MTT) has always been a crucial component of human cognition, but has not always been identified or supported in schooling. Recent advances in psychological science consider MTT to be responsible for future-oriented thought and action, particularly, the formation of foresight. Therefore, an innovative research trajectory for education is to enabling students to harness their MTT abilities and support the development of what could be called foresightful/prudential intellect. By enhancing the flexibility and the reach of MTT ability, education can enable students to develop foresightful/prudential reasoning skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains, including the ability to carry out collaborative MTT. Some of these skills are ecological problem identification and solution, environmental decision-making, root-cause analysis, spatial reasoning, and evolutionary thinking. This thesis first examines the evolution and development of MTT by combining studies in cognitive-developmental science, biological anthropology, and evolutionary neuroscience. A secondary examination reveals that although foresightful/prudential intellect is more closely associated with cognitive self-governance, clear benchmarks for assessing and supporting this intellect via MTT tasks need to be identified. A developmental study that used a dynamic system problem illustrates the ways foresightful/prudential reasoning manifests itself. Quantitative and qualitative differences are found in school-aged children’s and undergraduate students’ episodic memory syntheses when they were asked how to prevent the problem from reoccurring. The results of this study suggest that foresightful/prudential reasoning skills in environmental topics could be extrapolated to entire classrooms by designing MTT-based learning tools or tasks. Two prominent techniques are identified to show what these tools, tasks, or techniques could involve and how they could be designed. Finally, a teacher education agenda is discussed in alignment with the goals of MTT-based learning and fostering the development of foresightful/prudential intellect. This agenda needs to be approached in stages and with a sense of urgency given the current pace of anthropogenic environmental change. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Parlar, U. (2015). An Examination of Mental Time Travel and Its Role in the Development of Foresightful/Prudential Intellect (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24877 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/24877 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2487 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Graduate Studies | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Calgary | en |
| dc.publisher.place | Calgary | en |
| dc.rights | University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. | |
| dc.subject | Education--Curriculum and Instruction | |
| dc.subject | Educational Psychology | |
| dc.subject | Psychology--Developmental | |
| dc.subject.classification | Mental time travel | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Intelligence | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Cognitive evolution | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Dynamic systems | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Episodic memory | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Curriculum | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Educational theory | en_US |
| dc.title | An Examination of Mental Time Travel and Its Role in the Development of Foresightful/Prudential Intellect | |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Educational Research | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Calgary | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | |
| ucalgary.item.requestcopy | true |