Research and research communities

Rachel's research has a tendency to make me self-consciously aware of things even when I'm far outside of the research context-- e.g., my own gestures, my use (or not) of Rogerian discourse, and my overwhelming tendency to do some epistemic distancing.

Something that Krishna pointed out this weekend on the car ride back to Seattle was the ways in which our community picks up on new ideas in research - employ those in an instructional context - and those then feed back into our understanding of our own community.  If I may be so bold, I think that my interest in Sfard's work on commognitive conflict - which I presented at FFPER a few years ago (and certainly is rooted in my work with David Hammer) - is present in Amy's interpretation of our own community's conflicts (the title of Sfard's paper is "When the Rules of Discourse Change, but Nobody Tells You" - doesn't that sound a lot like Amy's really cool work? - she comes to SPU and the rules of discourse have changed... and she wants to figure out what's going on because no one ever tells you).  As research begins to attend to the role of community in our classrooms, we suddenly have a new language and a lens to look at our own knowledge-building community that can't help but make our own community better.  And by doing that -- looking at myself as a learner in this community -- I'm perhaps better able to feel what my students feel.

Nonetheless -- that is, despite what I know about knowledge building communities -- I was overly confrontational with some people this weekend-- doing the very thing I work hard to make sure my students don't do.  When grading "participation" I ask students what are the things they want to work on, how they might work on those, and then later to assess their work. So for my participation grade in PER, I'd like to work on being the member of this community that I ask my students to be in their community.  (If you saw the video from this weekend, I'd like to be more Dee-like.)

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

I brought this up in our writing group and I'll add it here because it has really been needling me lately. I read the much-maligned "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" recently and there was a place where she talks about moral failings, if you will, claiming that her very strict approach was an incredible act of selfless love - she set and maintained high standards; when her kids thought something was too hard for them to do she maintained that it wasn't and eventually they succeeded; that parents who revel in their children's cute attempts at art, poetry, etc - that everything is "good" - are selling their kids short (she received half-assed homemade birthday cards at one point and made her kids re-do them).  She calls her approach being a "Chinese mother." -- and it would be far easier to do movie night and pancake breakfasts and be an "American mother" than to push for, demand and set standards of excellence.

This makes me think a lot about cultural assumptions of "moral failings" and curricula that "spoon feed" students. Like, I revel in a student's claim that zero-speed can be defined as "if you take a movie and an object is in the same place for more than one frame." Maybe if I said "go read your calculus book again and write an essay and a proof that explain why that isn't true" I would be setting a higher standard than my usual response, which is to smile and say "wow, what a cool idea. let's talk about this some more...".

I guess I'm more able to see why someone would see PER curriculum as spoon-feeding, or selling kids short, or celebrating mediocrity. Students in my class might not get a sense of how very hard it is to be a good scientist and what real excellence and achievement looks like. It's hard to explain what I mean by that. But it troubles me.

FFPER-PS presentation

I'm presenting my theoretical hat to FFPER-PS. This is anxiety inducing because I think that what I do when I have a research topic is that I go theoretical-hat shopping. And not at the real hat store but some guy with a card table on the side of the road selling Genuine Faux Research Hats. (That link explains that I may be distancing myself epistemically.)

For session leaders:

Presentation

The presentation should describe as explicitly as possible what it is that you do when you collect data, how you analyze data, and why you take the approach that you do.  This could include discussion of, among other topics, your goals and assumptions, the types of claims that you make, how you generate claims, and if, when, and how you generalize your findings.

Data sample

Select a data sample that you are particularly excited about and that you feel participants could meaningfully engage with using your "theoretical hat."  Each session will last 1.5 hours, and may include your overview and description of the framework, working time for participants, and group synthesis and discussion.  Please select a data set for which these activities will be manageable within the available time.

There were several data sets I thought would generate a great discussion:

1. video of students that include a reference to transformative experience (a student who went home and brought back her good acrylic paints; another student who had an appointment with her optometrist and wound up in a long conversation about how shape of the eye affects vision) -- and how and why to turn this into a research question.
2. data from students that shows they do not change in their NOS survey data, paired with video showing that they do change in their scientific practice. why this is worth exploring (grasp of practice v. declarative knowledge) and how we are exploring it.
3. The one I'm going with: students engaging with light & shadow and they do some really cool things and the thing that I wind up interested in is not something PER generally attends to. It's rich enough that I think a range of researchers would find an interesting research question in the data, and I'd be interested in hearing their questions and comparing them with my direction. (Which I will not share with you, readers, because I do not want to bias you if you'll be at FFPERPS!)

My primary interest is generating a conversation about institutional context and its effects on setting a research agenda.  This has arisen because of a recent conversation with Sam about developing a curriculum for Uganda. If someone is developing a cadre of teachers who can build a nation that can solve issues of life-and-death importance, the kinds of research questions they ask may be quite different.  If they're in a research setting where their primary audience for their work is not the students but fellow researchers, they'll ask different kinds of questions. I'm teaching science-phobic future elementary school teachers and they - along with blog viewers - are the primary audience for my work. It's also interesting because the presenters represent UW, Chico, and independent/connected-to-SPU, so there should be a range of contexts affecting our research.

I also want to think about questions of why we think students should learn physics, why we teach physics, and why we do PER. These are different questions from why physics should be taught and why PER should exist  -- I'm thinking the very personal decisions of why those who teach choose to teach and why those who research choose to research. 

Of course, the organizers have another goal for the discussion - and that's getting participants to actually try out my approach ...  which I'll do, but in the second half, and I'd be super happy to spend the entire session on the questions of context and goals for teaching and how those influence the choice of question.

Evolution homework - reasonable?

A few posts ago I mentioned that I'm struggling with developing a "learning about learning" activity related to evolution. Engaging in the real emotional/existential/religious/cultural questions seems more than most faculty (or students?) are comfortable doing. Making a weenie LAL about what-is-a-theory seems to ignore the elephant in the room.

So I'm starting to think about Elby/McCaskey and the split survey -- and then I'm thinking that, here, a split is a positive - an awareness of difference and a choice towards or away from reconciliation - rather than (necessarily) evidence of cognitive befuddlement.  So I start off with these statements:

Consider whether or not you agree with each of the following four statements:

1. The theory of evolution provides an explanation for the diversity of life on this planet. 

2. The theory of evolution attempts to provide an explanation the diversity of life on this planet. 

3.  I believe that the theory of evolution accurately explains the diversity of life on this planet. 

4.  Biologists believe that the theory of evolution accurately explains the diversity of life on this planet. 

Explain what someone might believe if they agree with statement 2, but do not agree with statement 1.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Explain what someone might believe if they agree with statement 1, but do not agree with statement 3.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Explain what someone might believe if they agree with statement 4, but do not agree with statement 1.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Explain what someone might believe if they agree with statement 2, but do not agree with statement 4.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Throughout this curriculum, we have begun each activity with “initial ideas” – asking you to consider your ideas about a topic and then, through experiments and engaging with scientists’ ideas, exploring how those ideas change in light of these activities. You have probably noticed that many of the initial ideas you or your classmates have are not consistent with biologists’ ideas, and coming to understand and believe scientists’ ideas is a matter of collecting and interpreting data, and examining how that data speaks to initial ideas.

Evolution, however, is a unique topic.  Differences between students’ initial ideas and biologists’ ideas often speak to a more fundamental difference that is not reconciled by examining data and engaging with scientists’ ideas.  Asking students to commit to an evolutionary perspective, researchers note, often “devalues the system of meaning [students] see for their lives.” (Long…)  Furthermore, for many students, taking on an evolutionary perspective asks them to put “the orthodox knowledge system of science in front of their commitment to inerrant faith. By this, science educators are [asking students] to change their relationship to the epistemological authority of their religious commitments.”

The goal of this chapter is to deepen your understanding of core ideas in evolutionary biology. The curriculum does not ask that you agree with those ideas.  That is, one goal of this chapter is for you to agree with statement 4 above:

Biologists believe that the theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on this planet.

This is a statement of unequivocal consensus of the field of biology, and we can explore the evidence and reasoning that lead biologists to endorse this idea.  By the end of the chapter, you should be able to recognize that this statement is one that is endorsed by biologists and better understand why it is that biologists agree with this.  However, this is not a statement about what you should believe about the origins of the diversity of life, or whether the authority of science can or should supersede the authority of other traditions.

You may find that, by engaging in this curriculum and examining how your ideas about life intersect with biologists’ ideas, you come to agree with statement 3:

I believe that the theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on this planet.

You may also find that, by engaging in this curriculum, you are further convinced that you disagree with this statement. Neither outcome is a goal of the curriculum; it is completely outside what we hope to teach with this curriculum.

For this reason, the initial ideas (below) explicitly asks you to consider what it is that biologists believe.  By “biologists” we mean “the consensus view of the field of biology.”  As in all fields, there are a vast number of biologists with a wide range of personal beliefs, but the field as a whole – represented in the textbooks, journal articles, grant activity and awards – is in strong agreement regarding whether the ideas we mention below are true or false.

INITIAL IDEAS

Consider each of the following statements about evolution. Do you agree or disagree with that statement? Why?

·       Biologists believe that evolution means that a new species is formed that wasn’t there before.  For example, they believe that giraffes developing a longer and longer neck over time is natural selection, but it is not evolution because the long-necked giraffes are still the same species as the short-necked ones

·       Biologists believe that evolution explains how life began on this planet.

·       Biologists believe that evolution explains how organisms adapt to a changing environment.  For instance, I can adapt to winter by wearing warmer clothing and animals can adapt to winter by growing a warmer winter coat

·       Biologists believe that evolution is a theory that hasn’t been fully tested or verified.  Biologists are in disagreement about whether it is true or not.

·       Biologists believe that natural selection is the way that evolution happens.  There are no other ways for evolution to occur.

·       Biologists believe that the consequence of evolution over a very long time (billions of years) is that all living things are related in a big family tree.  For instance, humans and apes are closely related, and even animals and plants share a distant common ancestor. 

I think I'm okay with this. At first I thought I was being disingenuous about it - I *do* hope that the ideas they learn in biology inform and affect them outside of biology class, right? And I still do - I just cannot prescribe the ways in which those ideas inform their extra-curricular life. And if they really do understand the claims of biology and find that it strengthens a creationist perspective, I think that's a perfectly wonderful outcome. So while a split-answer in physics usually means that they don't really know why a physicist would believe such goofy things, I think here it could mean "I know exactly why they believe that and I still disagree."

PERC paper on notebooks

Along with the contributed paper on the Energy Project, I have an "invited" talk on notebooks. (Until this year I did not know that "invited" talks are "self-invited" and I've been (only mildly) grumpy about having never been invited.) I've been meaning to write a paper on the notebooks, so maybe I can take advantage of this opportunity to get it done. Or will it get "lost" as a PERC paper is it researchy enough?  - I mostly want to use it to disseminate a practice and not to do any research on the effectiveness of the thing. 

I bet this could come together in 3 - 5 days. Do I have time?

I'd like to say:
1. literacy, as people who worry about academic literacies define it, is a big tent of writing practices that practitioners engage in to construct and share ideas. What are the scientific literacies, then, that physicists &/or physics teachers engage in? (write or find a list: representations, lab books, the arXiv, blogs (at least for PER), the chalkboard conversation, journal writing, journal reading, posters, talks.) (Maybe focus primarily on the construction of ideas rather than dissemination? - though those two are admittedly intertwined - I really am not excited about promoting 10-minute-talks or lame posters! (Not that PER has lame posters, I just think there has to be a better alternative.))

2. look at that! in our reformed classes, how much of that happens? ... and how many of those are necessarily joint-constructed? how often do we give students solo time for reflection, question-raising, etc. ?  which of these practices foster that individual work?

3. in Sci Inquiry we use notebooks... it is an element of scientific literacy . and we want them to be an "authentic" practice - something students do as a meaning-making practice and not a grade-getting practice. 

4.  so here's how we do that.
(explain the activity)

5. and here is what results from that activity
(give example rubrics)

6. and here are early challenges
(show a few dinky images where students don't show much inquiry - just science fair stuff)

7. and here is how we handle those
(instructor and student feedback)

8. and over time here is what we get!
(show some great notebook images)

9.conclusion. what classes would allow for this and which ones wouldn't?

Teaching evolution.

As part of my biology CCLI project, I'm in charge of writing our "Learning about learning" activities. These are modeled only loosely on the PET/PSET "LaL" activities.  A few look into K-12 classrooms and think about student ideas, but primarily I'm writing them as reflections on the curriculum and theories of how people learn.

One that I've been excited to write but kind of stuck on what to do is for the last chapter in the book - evolution.  The more I read, the less certain I am!

I've been trying to read up on research on this topic.  Mostly it's not what I want - correlations showing that creationists do or don't do worse on tests of conceptual understanding of evolution; correlations showing that creationists do or don't understand the nature of science... etc. But one article has left me unsettled.  "The Politics of Teaching Evolution, Science Education Standards, and Being a Creationist. - David E. Long"

One devastating quote:

As Long (2011) finds, Creationist students who are asked to conceive of a world where evolution has inarguably taken place, describe existential angst (Kierkegaard, 1957; Tillich, 1952) at the idea, seeing their dearest conceptions wrought insignificant. Students describe being unsettled, reject the premise as not even possible, express despair, smallness, feeling lied to, and at the extreme, associate thinking about evolution with thoughts of death. If such matters are beside the point in teaching science, then one is not fully apprehending how varying worldviews, and fundamentalism in particular, structure the ways that students approach knowledge claims that contradict what they know from their religious traditions.

And then:

Creationists are being asked to commit—epistemologically—to a suspension of their ontological commitment, putting the orthodox knowledge system of science in front of their commitment to inerrant faith. By this, science educators are, whether actively or subversively, asking Creationist students or teachers—by the learning outcomes expected of the curriculum—to change their relationship to the epistemological authority of their religious commitments.

And finally:

What precisely is meant by ‘‘knowing’’ and ‘‘understanding’’ that evolution has taken place? Can the state, through deploying a standardized curriculum, require and assure that students know that evolution has taken place, rather than simply show ‘‘understanding’’ by answering correctly on a test of standards?... For the sake of understanding the point, imagine being a Creationist, and think about what the following implies of your commitments of faith:

The knowledge [science] generates sometimes forces us to change—even discard— beliefs we have long held about ourselves and our significance in the grand scheme of things. . . The discovery that the earth is billions, rather than thousands, of years old may be a case in point. Such discoveries can be so distressing that it may take us years—or perhaps take society as a whole several generations—to come to terms with the new knowledge. Part of the price we pay for obtaining knowledge is that it may make us uncomfortable, at least initially (AAAS benchmarks, p. 184).

Is a value-free politics of evolution education possible? Smith (2010a) states, ‘‘many if not most authors including myself question the propriety of changing beliefs as a goal of public instruction in a democratic society’’ (p. 525). The poverty of such a claim becomes unavoidable if we, for example, consider students (or teachers) who harbor notions of racial or gender superiority as a belief. The ontology of religious fundamentalism is one of meta- physical superiority. ... Evolution, for a Creationist, is not a value-neutral knowledge claim. Equally so, that there is an orthodoxy of civic tolerance within an educational research community does not detach such a community from ideology. A public education devoid of an openness to change in belief is no education that I believe in. What role then should all American public school teachers, guided by our research and in some cases under our training, play in opening evolution education to students?

He concludes:

Currently, a majority of U.S. public school biology teachers omit or downplay evolution in the curriculum in deference to religious commitments. Is this a satisfactory state of affairs for scientists and science educators in the United States? The individual citizen can rightly believe as they like. But I submit, for the sake of democratic education, that public educators are charged with upholding and exploring the fullness of science wherever it goes—not curtailing it in the name of religion.

But if that's true, then I think we need to be honest. A lot of folks try to say "there are plenty of religious scientists" "the two ideas can coexist" - but I think this paper says "no... you can 'understand' evolution while maintaining creationist ontological commitments; but you cannot 'believe' evolution" and if we want education to really have meaning - that students believe what they're taught (which is where Long concludes) - then this means something.

Perplexed.

Representing Energy for a Physics of Processes and Causation

I have a habit of confusing the abstract deadline with the paper deadline for PERC. It's like people who set their clocks ahead so they won't oversleep. I kind of realize that the two deadlines arent the same, but I try to forget that I know that.

I realized my error in time this year - but had already told Rachel I'd have this together by June 1, as a prep for thinking about the ELAs paper. I'm only a little behind schedule on that deadline, and way ahead of schedule for the PERC deadline. This is a relief.

I like it - mostly - though I would love to do more with this. Use Sherin's work as a template for analyzing the teachers' conversations, for example. How long until sabbatical?

Read and let me know what you think. Still plenty of time to edit it... though editing won't be a priority.

Paper can be found here.