It’s been a great 10 years! I am delighted to see that while my writing has slowed down in recent years, many posts are visited again and again. The steady stream of site visitors leads me to believe that the content here is useful, or at the very least intriguing. Please accept my heartfelt thanks to all my loyal subscribers who still remain on the list year in and year out and to my one-off site visitors who took a chance on a link and stayed for a while to see what the site has to offer.
After 10 years on WordPress, it’s time for some reflection….and for some changes. Read on for both. And since a goal for this site has always been to share some Psychology, I’ve included some fun facts about self-concept and identity development, too. I hope you enjoy the reflective thought exercise, and read-on to catch what’s new, at the end.
Reflections
Back in the early days of 2012 as I was breathing life into CognitionEducation, my goals with the project were twofold: (1) I wanted to “Give some Psychology away” and (2) I wanted to practice writing in more conversational, less “scientific” ways. Prior to blogging here, I’d tried my hand at submitting some writing to non-academic periodicals – or, rather, haha, sources otherwise known as magazines – and the feedback I received was humbling. Short of it: I wrote like an academic and readers don’t want that. Words like “stilted”, “awkward,” and “dense” were used to describe my submissions. So I gave myself a professional development challenge to figure out how to do better and I created this site. Today I am checking in on my project, and my goals.
A quick-look at some numbers clearly suggest that my goals have been met! With 51 posts and 89,000 words, I’ve shared a lot of Psychological content and have definitely practiced my writing.
My goals actually went a little deeper than just going through the motions of wordsmithing and content-sharing though. I really did then – and still do today – want what I shared here to be perceived by visitors as valuable. I have hoped that my words are received as little gifts, or sparks that initiate some insight, or that my suggestions inspire positive growth and change.
Whether these deeper aims – that my writing has improved and that the content I’ve shared is truly useful – were met is harder to know. To interrogate this question, I decided to get creative and engage in a thought experiment.
Here it is.
Throughout childhood, self-concept and identity develop. The pattern of growth follows a cycle: children have feelings, thoughts, ideas, and so on that guide their behavior. Whether we call it niche picking – gravitating to spaces and people who make you feel comfortable – or self-awareness, even toddlers have preferences! So children approach the world, and the world reacts to them. The cycles of action & reaction, reflection, and approach-avoid and so on shapes children’s growing sense of self and eventually their identity. The growth patterns are predictable, and developmental scientists can state with reasonable confidence what the self concept and identity of children at certain age-milestones will be like (cultural variation notwithstanding).
- Self-concept: What are you like? How do you describe yourself to others? What sorts of things “represent” you? What are your preferences, strengths, and weaknesses?
- Identity: Who are you and who do aspire to become? That is, identity is a coherent sense of self to which one is solidly committed, and that informs plans for future advances and life decisions.
With that as backstory: If this site were a child, what would it’s 10-year-old self-concept and identity be like?
At ten years old, what is a child’s “self-concept” like?
At 10, children’s ability to hold information in mind and compare ideas is growing. This allows children to think about themselves not just as single entities (which they are clearly good at doing), but also as members of a group. Children know what they like and don’t like, and by comparing themselves to their peers (whether via self-reflection or by virtue of formal and spontaneous comparisons made at school and in activities) they are starting to understand where they fit in their networks: home, school, peer groups, after school activities and the like. In fact, because they aren’t quite ready to think in fully abstract “Identity” terms yet (more brain development needs to happen, among other things) their group memberships operate as Identity-proxies, and are thus really important.
Children in this age range have an implicit idea of their personalities, and can qualify what they are like, for example they may explain, when asked, that they are “outgoing with their friends” but shyer when around strangers. Or that they are aggressive on the soccer field, but hesitate to draw attention to themselves in the classroom. When it comes to future thinking though, 10-year-olds tend not to dwell in the “what if” frame of mind that marks the start of more mature identity exploration.
So how does CognitionEducation line up? What is CogEdu “like”?
As an entity, the site is a container for many ideas. Across 51 posts, the topics span my interest areas in Psychology! Whether the thesis of a post centers on a concept [Motivation, Self-Concept, Metacognition, Memory, Empathy, Self Esteem] or on an activity/engagement [Parenting, Teaching, Learning, Playing, Studying] – a visitor with a healthy appetite for Psychology & for words will find a veritable treasure trove of food-for-thought! That is, this site is varied in it’s appearance and in its behaviors.
Who is CogEdu’s tribe? If CogEdu were a school-aged-child, what clubs would it belong to? It does have many interests. While topics do touch on Cognitive Science (e.g., Memory: Its all Good, Labels on the Brain, Don’t forget to Write, Embracing Embodiment, Robo-Puppy and Helicopter Parent), I think that the tribe for this site is more applied. Most posts circle around to Learning, Teaching, and Parenting. If I were to hazard a guess, I would expect that CogEdu’s tribe is a quirky, nerdy, and creative bunch of folks who are interested in empirically based self- or professional improvement. The fact that my posts on …
- The problems with the unfounded notion of Learning Styles (e.g., Daily Prompt: Learning Styles and Learning Styles Done Right)
- Effective Strategies for teaching in Higher Ed (e.g., Zoom-in or Zoom out, What Does Authentic Learning Look Like in Psych, and A Little Story about Learning about Learning while Learning)
… remain frequently visited, suggest as much.
Am I right though? I don’t know. And that’s just like a 10-year-old child, too. In middle childhood children are still learning how to get into the heads of others to try and figure out where they fit. Sometimes it’s made clear to them, but other times it’s a bit of a guessing game. I have site visit data though, and that does tell a story.
How about Identity?
At 10, most children still live more in the moment and are unconcerned about their future selves, and their purpose. In the biz, this state of mind is sometimes called an “identity diffusion” state, where a child has not yet experienced the need for committed, future-focused self-definition. They have a sense of what they are about, what they like, and what they are good at, and they carry on, mostly unperturbed.
I’d say that this “diffusion” state fits with CogEdu, too. The site isn’t aimless – it has a consistent vibe and a niche. But it isn’t a site with a coherent and focused mission either. I expect that when a new post notice pops up in your inbox, it’s a little bit like opening a secret-santa gift – you don’t know what it’s going to be and there’s just a little anticipation! Will they finally hit it right and give you something you like, enjoy, need, or just want?? Sometimes the post likely resonates, but other times I expect some posts don’t pique your interest. There’s nothing wrong with a diffused state like this, but eventually, just as humans need to sort themselves out to get on a healthy trajectory towards adulthood, writing projects like CogEdu need to adjust and change, too.
What’s next, for CogEdu?
What’s in store for CogEdu, in future? Like a near-tween, I can say this: some things will remain the same, but other things are headed for a change. The site will remain as it is: a container for many ideas. I will continue to pay my dues to keep the domain name so that those of you who like to revisit posts can continue to do so.
But as a blogger, I am ready to try something new. I’ve started a new site on Substack, under a new moniker too. I have chosen to go with PsychSoundbites as my site-name, in keeping with the Instagram account I started a few years ago as a companion to an assignment series I run in one of my classes. Psychsoundbites will have a familiar feel to it – I am still the same author after all. But this site has a somewhat more focused mission to promote modern Psychological content and to use this content for good. It’s not wildly different, but I do intend to branch out from looping back to education and move into the self-improvement space a bit more decisively.
Will I post any new content here on CogEdu? Maybe? I haven’t decided. I probably will though, so I hope you will stick around too. But I’d also love to see you over on Substack. Will you join me there?
In closing – it’s been real, folks! I’ve enjoyed my WordPress presence very much, even though I have not had much interaction here lately. If you have enjoyed or used or benefited, or even just shared a CogEdu post, I’d love to know about it. As always, the comment box is open for you.
Cheers to 10 years! Thanks for being here with me.
-Prf. Erica K.
cognitioneducation.me 