Rethinking Psychology

The recent widespread rejection of conventional theory and method has led to the evolution of different ways of gathering and analyzing data. This accessible textbook introduces key research methods that challenge psychology′s traditional preoccupation with `scientific′ experiments. The book provides a well-structured guide to methods, containing a range of qualitative approaches (for example, semi-structured interviews, grounded theory, discourse analysis) alongside a reworking of quantitative methods to suit contemporary psychological research. A number of chapters are also explicitly concerned with research as a dynamic interactive process. The internationally respected contributors steer the reader through the main stages of conducting a study using these methods.

This book offers arguments against the view that interpersonal understanding involves a 'folk' or 'commonsense' psychology, a view which Ratcliffe suggests is a theoretically motivated abstraction. His alternative account draws on phenomenology, neuroscience and developmental psychology, exploring patterned interactions in shared social situations.

This text provides a critique of the mainstream theoretical foundations ranging from phenomenology and symbolic interactionism to cultural and feminist approaches. Contributors present key strands of theory, showing how they feed into the debate about the creation of a new psychology.

Ancients and moderns alike have constructed arguments and assessed theories on the basis of common sense and intuitive judgments. Yet, despite the important role intuitions play in philosophy, there has been little reflection on fundamental questions concerning the sort of data intuitions provide, how they are supposed to lead us to the truth, and why we should treat them as important. In addition, recent psychological research seems to pose serious challenges to traditional intuition-driven philosophical inquiry. Rethinking Intuition brings together a distinguished group of philosophers and psychologists to discuss these important issues. Students and scholars in both fields will find this book to be of great value.

Despite more than half a century of psychological research on creativity we are still far from a clear understanding of the creative process, its antecedents and consequences and, most of all, the ways in which we can effectively support creativity. This is primarily due to a narrow focus on creative individuals isolated from culture and society. Rethinking Creativity proposes a fundamental review of this position and argues that creativity is not only a psychological but a sociocultural phenomenon. This edited volume aims to relocate creativity from inside individual minds to the material, symbolic and social world of culture. It brings together eminent social and cultural psychologists who study dynamic, transformative and emergent phenomena, and invites them to conceptualise creativity in ways that depart from mainstream definitions and theoretical models existing in past and present literature on the topic. Chapters include reflections on the relationship between creativity and difference, creativity as a process of symbolic transformation, the role of apprenticeships and collaboration, the importance of considering materiality and affordances in creative work, and the power of imagination to construct individual trajectories. The diverse contributions included in this book offer readers multiple pathways into the intricate relationship between mind, culture, and creativity, and invite them to rethink these phenomena in ways that foster creative action within their own life and the lives of those around them. It will be of key interest to both social and cultural psychologists, as well as to creativity researchers and those who, as part of their personal or professional life, try to understand creativity and develop creative forms of expression.

Since the very first ‘co-operative’ school opened its doors in 2008, the complicated relations between ‘co-operative’ approaches to schooling and democratic subjectivity remain unexplored. This ground breaking book considers the role of ‘voice’ in co-operative schooling and its place in radical research, offering an original, critical analysis of an alternative model of ‘co-operative’ schooling set within the context of the contemporary public education sector in England. Drawing on post structural theory and critical ethnographic research, the author explores how this model might offer new ways of thinking about what education is for and who stands to benefit or lose when schools adopt co-operative ways of working together across the structures of governance, pedagogy and curriculum. The book considers how participatory ways of working in education might inform a more critical educational psychology that takes engendering equality and collective well-being as an alternative starting point to measuring individual achievement and cognitive development. This text will appeal to advanced level undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners, particularly in the field of psychology, education, politics and social research, with an interest in developing a critical appreciation of inequalities in education and in reimagining the possibilities for change.

This introductory text presents a coherent overview of prevalent theories, methods and applications within contemporary health psychology.

The recent widespread rejection of conventional theory and method has led to the evolution of different ways of gathering and analyzing data. This accessible textbook introduces key research methods that challenge psychology's traditional preoccupation with `scientific' experiments. The book provides a well-structured guide to methods, containing a range of qualitative approaches (for example, semi-structured interviews, grounded theory, discourse analysis) alongside a reworking of quantitative methods to suit contemporary psychological research. A number of chapters are also explicitly concerned with research as a dynamic interactive process. The internationally respected contributors steer the reader through the main stages of conducting a study using these methods.