Walden Two Essay

“At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.” – B.F. Skinner, Walden Two. Skinner (1948), who authored the book Walden Two, believed that psychological concepts could be used to change the world for the better. Although Skinner primarily attributed this changing power to behaviorism alone, psychology is a much more multidisciplinary and multifaceted field, with much more to offer than just behaviorism. Different branches of psychological research and application can be joined together to change parts of our world for the better. It doesn’t have to be so black-and-white, with harsh lines drawn between disciplines. Skinner

This perception can lead to feelings of depersonalization or deindividuation for these students, as they may feel as though they are just part of a larger crowd with nothing that really sets them apart or makes them special. In my Developmental Psychology Seminar class (PSYC 440), we watched a documentary that tackled similar issues to what I am discussing in this paper. The documentary, Paper Tigers, follows a principal of an alternative high school for students who were unable to succeed at other schools primarily due to behavioral issues, and how the principal defies the stereotypes of these students and utilizes psychological principles to improve their outcomes (Redford, 2015). Although this paper is not discussing behavioral issues, the idea that the effect of stereotypes can be counteracted by psychological concepts and enough care to look at a student’s strengths over their perceived inferiority is important to what I am

Running with the solution proposed by Elder et al. (2018), we must look at how psychological research supports this solution. Let us break the solution down into its differentiable parts: 1) a strengths-based approach as opposed to a deficit-oriented approach, 2) the creation of a collaborative environment between teachers and families with increased expectations of these students, and 3) the eventual decrease of stereotypes and stigma surrounding diagnoses and labels due to the eventual increase of higher, strengths-based expectations. The first part of this solution is supported largely by research into psychological processes, primarily research into intelligence. Gardner (1983) points out the bias that solely focusing on one kind of intelligence can cause, and this bias can be particularly harmful for students with disabilities, who often do not fit what many people consider “normal” intelligence. Thus, he created a brain-based theory of intelligence that postulated multiple kinds of intelligences, which makes it almost an inherently strengths-based theory and