Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

15 Black and White Thinking Examples

Black-and-white thinking is a cognitive distortion and mental heuristic characterized by viewing situations, people, or experiences in rigid, absolute terms. This all-or-nothing mindset leaves no room for nuance or complexity, often leading to oversimplified and inaccurate perceptions (i.e. binary thinking). While it can be comforting to come to one absolute yes/no or good/bad answer to […]

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18 Fixed Mindset Examples

A fixed mindset is a mentality that you’re incapable of personal development and skill improvement, no matter how hard you try. People with fixed mindsets engage in deterministic thinking where they assume people have innate abilities and talents rather than abilities that are developed over time. The fixed mindset concept is contrasted to the concept

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38 Motivational Interviewing Questions Examples

Motivational interviewing is a therapeutic approach from counseling and psychology that aims to enhance a client’s intrinsic motivation. The four key principles of motivational interviewing are remembered through the acronym RULE (Haque & D’Souza, 2019): resist the righting reflect, understand the client’s motivations, lisen with empathy, and empower the client (explained later in this article).

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21 Types of Motivation

Motivation refers to the underlying cause of any human action. In psychology, all human actions are seen to have a base cause, or motivation, that explain why we choose to do what we do. We often create a hierarchy of motivations, whereby intrinsic motivation (the desire to do the task for the value of the

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65 Performance Goals Examples

Performance goals refer to goals that are focused on a clearly-defined result or output, often known as a key performance indicator. In achievement goal theory, we often differentiate performance goals from development or mastery goals: Performance goals are regularly used when setting out a project, in workplace performance reviews, and in personal performance reviews. Examples

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38 Development Goals Examples

Development goals refer to goals that are focused on improving personal knowledge and skills. The key feature of development goals is that they are not concerned with an externalized objective like a certificate or financial outcome. Rather, the focus “is on the discovery of effective strategies or processes to attain desired results.” In other words,

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35 Higher-Order Thinking Questions

Higher-order thinking questions are questions that you can ask in order to stimulate thinking that requires significant knowledge mastery and data manipulation. Generally, higher-order thinking involves thinking from the top 3 levels of bloom’s taxonomy: analysis, evaluation, and knowledge creation. The term “higher-order” is used because these forms of thinking require strong command of information

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27 Growth Mindset Examples

A growth mindset is a way of thinking that starts from the belief that you can always improve upon yourself through effort over time. The growth mindset concept was created by psychologist Carol Dweck, who conducted extensive research on the different ways people perceive intelligence and ability. Dweck’s achievement goal theory work identified two main

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25 Teaching Styles Examples

The simplest way to differentiate between teaching styles is to compare student-centered to teacher-centered. Arguably, many of the remaining teaching styles examples on this list sit along a spectrum from highly student-centered to highly teacher-centered. Other examples of teaching styles examples include inquiry-based, didactic, democratic, facilitative, and andragogic (the art of teaching adults). Teachers can

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12 Reflective Teaching Examples

Reflective Teaching Examples 1. Reflection-in-Practice Reflection in practice is a concept by David Schon which involves small moments of reflection throughout your day. Instead of pausing at the end of your activities and reflecting upon what you did, Schon argues that good practitioners reflect in the moment and make tiny changes from moment-to-moment. This is

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