First-Person Educational Psychology for Teacher Education Majors: A Biofunctional Understanding Intervention

This is a semester-long study of the development of first-person biofunctional understanding in educational psychology for teacher education majors. We defined biofunctional understanding as a spontaneous intellectual capacity. To reach its deep biological levels, sculpted by countless evolutionary millennia, students identified and dwelled in writing on their biggest idea of every week for a semester. They stated the idea in a simple sentence and followed by writing a concise paragraph to contemplate on it. Control sections equated their biggest idea with one most important to learn through the conventional learning-testing cycle of deliberate knowledge internalization or construction. Experimental sections fought the learning-testing-cycle urge and sought by hindsight the biggest idea of the most striking revelation (MSR) delivered to their awareness spontaneously by the biofunctional<>psychologyical spiral of their intuition>revelation<>reflection cycle. Results showed that experimental condition outperformed the control in the development of their insightful understanding measured by a Levels of Revelatory Strikingness Scale (LRSS) suggesting that learners change their understanding as a function of their 1st-person revelations than 2nd/3rd-person evidence.