Using and Navigating this Book

This book covers eight chapters that typically cover a topic in one week, but in a couple of cases, the chapters will span two weeks. Here, I provide an overview of the mechanics of the text and what you can expect as you read each chapter and associated article to prepare for class.

What is a Pressbook?

Pressbooks is an open-source publishing platform that runs on WordPress (best known as a blogging platform) and is licensed to TMU through the library. It is an electronic book publishing format that bypasses the requirements for traditional publishing, such as cost (the book is available free of charge to students), paper copies (this book is only available electronically) and a staffed editorial office that works in such a profit-based model.

Instead, Pressbooks is a platform that enables academics such as myself to write a textbook that perhaps does not map onto the demands in the field of higher education for more universal and psychology-based approaches. Without paper copies and the restrictions that formal publishing entails in generating new versions every several years, a Pressbook can be edited frequently. It can also be improved with feedback from the community in which it is being used. In this way, the content is more dynamic and reflective of diverse ideas that can be easily incorporated each year.

Lastly, the digital delivery model and the platform are conducive to interactivity far beyond what the “e-text” versions of paper texts can achieve. The very conception of learning tools helps to drive the pedagogical goals of a course when videos, quizzes, interactive activities and reflections are embedded into the chapters themselves.

How is this Book Structured?

The text is separated into eight chapters on the following topics: Introduction, Theory, Attention, Conceptual, Memory, Problem-Solving, Social Cognition and Models of Early Learning.

Each chapter covers one week’s worth of content but is supplemented by an additional reading. That way, my voice as an author is not always dominant, and you, as students, can engage with other voices from scholars’ writings and verbal teachings. More details on how the book works in conjunction with other pieces of the course are below.

Each chapter is structured the same way so that you can acclimate to what learning activities are expected each week. This structure will also help you complete tasks embedded into your readings, or done in preparation for class or seminar. More details on the specific interactive features are below.

How is this Course Structured?

CLD 307 is divided into a standard semester of 12 weeks, with the first and last week involving no formal readings, although the last week may involve some short readings external to the text.

The basic structure for a typical week consists of:

• A textbook chapter on the topic of the week (typically 5-8 single-spaced pages)
• An additional required reading (not optional, directly related to chapter)
• Interactive components embedded within the textbook and on D2L Brightspace

What Topics Will be Covered?

What Interactive Features Are in this Book?

The table below lists the interactive features you will encounter in this textbook.