INFP/ESTJ

Last week one of my favorites was exasperated by the inquiry class -- and since she's one of our majors, she will be in my advanced inquiry class, so was asking someone else about it when I wandered by. I asked about the conversation and she was kind about it, but very clear that this style of class just isn't working for her. A few things about her: she's former military, then law enforcement before being disabled in a training injury. She's a mother, is manager of an orchard, and whatever bar you set for her she will exceed it with enthusiasm. She's never late, often stays after to help pick up, never misses an assignment.  She brought pistachios to class last week (after the morning harvest); brought plums earlier.  She gets things done. And the lack of a clear bar in this class is driving her nuts. She notices herself mentally checking-out and that's also driving her crazy. Early on, when we were starting to set up questions and research them, she created detailed power point presentations after searching out information online. Over time it became clear that this wasn't the thing to do -- though I did reference their slides and we did talk about the ideas they brought up, there's definitely been a lack of power-point the last 5 weeks.  There have been two instances in the class where I feel she's been somewhat publicly recognized as not fully "owning" the information she found online -- (1) she researched cones with color vision and notes that we have millions of cones in our eyes - when asked if we have a cone that detects purple, she said yes.  I (conversationally) said something like "actually - no, and that's the weird thing. We do have millions of cones, but only three different types...".  Then (2) I mentioned something about covering up the top half of our pinhole and she said, quickly, "well then we'd lose the bottom half of our image." Someone else said "no, that's just a smaller pinhole. It would get dark but clear." 

I should also say that I really really *like* her-- she's direct, open, incredibly kind, and steely-strong. And her work ethic makes me embarrassed if I drop the ball and return an assignment late or feel as though I am under-prepared.  So it bothers me that she doesn't like the class.  I don't like wasting people's time, especially people who use their time well and have little time to spare.  So that's the preamble.

I had them take the Myers Briggs personality test over the weekend. (I'm hesitant to talk about it b/c I don't know how pseudo-sciencey or pop-psychology this personality type thing is. But when I first took it it was a revelation to me and I still feel a strong identity as an "INFP"- like that says something stable and important about me.  "INFP"ers feel like "my people" more than, say, PER does or Atkins or whatever.)  I thought of this because I remember taking it with my roommate - and there were questions about "I like it when things are settled" or "I like keeping options open" and "I am happier after I've made a purchase" -- things like that -- where I was shocked to see that Monica was squarely in the prefer-things-all-wrapped-up category. Who likes that? it's like prefering to have OPENED your presents instead of having a room full of wrapped presents. (I've thought before that my Myers Briggs type says a lot about how I like to teach - and even predicted to Sam that Hunter and I would be the same type. We are.)

Monday I divided the room into sections: Extravert v. Introvert and then Perceiving v. Judging.  (Jung's types, I think?) Within those sections, they further subdivided N/S F/T.  I had the students in each section talk about how they respond to this style class and whether this is something they have in common with others from their "type" -- this can be kind of hokey and I said it was something I was just curious about as opposed to certain that the correlation would be there.

Some information from Wikipedia on I/E:

• Extraverts are action oriented, while introverts are thought oriented.
• Extraverts seek breadth of knowledge and influence, while introverts seek depth of knowledge and influence.

And information on P/J:

• judging types like to "have matters settled".
• perceptive types prefer to "keep decisions open".

I'm a solid I P.  The three other students in my corner of the room were my people. And, true to expectations, in the opposite corner was the exasperated student, and others who I would completely expect to be there. They want rules! they want answers!  J. talked about how she goes home to show her son the things we do and what we've learned, but when we're just talking all day she doesn't have a concrete thing to share and talk about. A. - over in my corner - talked about how he'll walk around all day after class looking at things - a spot of light - and thinking more about how it came to be that way. The

It was really fun for the introverts to talk about how we *enjoy* being alone-- A. talked about having "social bodyguards" who go out with him and prevent him from needing to interact with other people. (He also said something Richard and I joke about all the time -- how much we hate getting our hair cut b/c we're expected to make small talk for a half hour.)  Some were surprised "you're an introvert? but you're not shy!" - and so we got to talking about shy v. introversion.  And it was also cool to see everyone in the room sitting among their kind -- the talkative ones on the left, the less chatty on the right. The give-me-rules in the back, the here's-an-idea in the front.  Some surprises (E. & K. both were in the back, though on the expected sides) but mostly people sat where I expected them to. 

The whole conversation felt great -- really fun, and insightful, and gives us a new vocabulary for things. Instead of 'why are we still talking about this??' you can say 'ah - there are those perceptive-types, mulling it over and over and seeing all the sides of things.'  And instead of thinking "those bone-headed students don't get it" (which I wouldn't think!) - I can think "here's someone who enjoys a different kind of knowledge than I enjoy."


Anyway, it led me to wonder what it is I expect from, say, this student I mentioned above. -- I want my students to like science and to feel that class is not a waste of their time.  But what does that mean-- can everyone like the same things? What *is* a personality - is it the kinds of things you enjoy?  If we're talking about affect and enjoying science, what does that mean in terms of personality types?  Do I want her to enjoy not knowing and having lots of loose ends?  That seems like something I can't want for her (and if it was something I wanted for her, it seems futile) -- happiness with loose ends seems rooted in something more fundamental to a person than (even) identity.

I also think about Amy's research on how people do research.

asking all the right questions

Some of this is posted on my grant blog - but it's password protected, so I'm adding more notes here...

In inquiry yesterday (and Monday too) we spent the entire time discussing specular & diffuse reflection. The question that started it:

If light reflects off of something and everyone can see it (diffuse reflection) did that light bounce off like a pool ball (equal angles - GR's theory) or did it come in at one angle and reflect off at all angles (shatters - AL's theory)?

This led to two ideas:

1. Light must go off in all directions if we can all see it, so it shatters.
2. It pool-ball-bounces off of microscopically rough surfaces, so it goes everywhere even though it reflects off at just one angle.

Since we know "smoothness" matters (the smoother the surface the more it seems to "pool ball" in one direction) it seems that idea 2 is the key idea. Plus they think there's something "atomistic" about light -- what is "half" of a red light ray? -- what would it mean to "shatter" light into pieces?

From there we debated the two ideas:

1. Suggests that a light ray is a thing that divides into many.
2. Suggests that a light ray is a bundle of things that separate.

-- most groups like the rough-surfaces/bundle-of-things idea.
-- one group thinks that if it's a bundle, the spot of light we see wouldn't be a nice uniform spot - it would send one ray one place, another another place, and look patchy.   So it must fragment. But they don't know how such a fragmentation happens. And don't know how to respond to the question of how light can be broken in pieces.

Which led to Andy's idea --

light is like a push on something with all these springs attached to it - and those springs all start to wiggle. It's not like a superball at all (our model of diffuse reflection: superballs on cobblestones).  It's like a push.  You can't say the same push came "off" something as was pushed "on" something. It's not like matter. (he has not had a physics class or looked at models of matter as being connected by springs - crazy right?)

At the end of class, I mentioned how they're asking all the right questions (I can't remember what that comment was in response to) and they laughed (which surprised me) and I said something about how across the creek (in the physics building) students are finding out the answers to your questions and they don't even know it.  Kristin looks to the physics building and wails "Tell us your ways!"

I thought of Kristin this morning while I taught a physics lab (as a sub) where they have the answers and don't even know it.

Anyway, I was reminded of a quote by Irwin about art - he's telling his biographer about his development as an artist and interjects:

“You know, you have to be careful in taking these things I’m saying and working them into too clear an evolving narrative. There’s a danger in spelling these recollections out so lucidly that your reader gains the impression that at the time I knew what I was doing and where all this was leading in some sort of intellectual way.  You have to make it very clear to anyone who might read your essay, especially any young artist [me: scientist] who might happen to pick it up, that my whole process was really an intuitive activity in which all of the time I was only putting one foot in front of the other, and that each step was not that resolved. Most of the time I didn’t have any idea where I was going; I had no real intellectual clarity as to what it was I thought I was doing. Usually it was just a straightforward commitment in terms of pursuing the particular problems or questions which had been raised in the doing of the work.

Maybe I was just gradually developing a trust in the act itself; that somehow, if it were pursued legitimately, the questions it would raise would be legitimate and the answers would have to exist somewhere, would be worth pursuing and would be of consequence. Actually, during those years in the mid-sixties the answers seemed to matter less and less: I was becoming much more of a question person than an answer person.

The thing that really struck me that most as I got into developing my interest in the area of questions is the degree to which as a culture we are geared for just the opposite.  We are past-minded, in the sense that all of our systems of measure are developed and n a sense dependent upon a kind of physical resolution.  We tag our renaissances at the highest level of performance, whereas it’s really fairly clear to me that once the question is raised, the performance is somewhat inevitable, almost just a mopping-up operation, merely a matter of time. Now, I’m not anti-performance, but I find it vey precarious for a culture only to be able to measure performance and never to be able to credit the questions themselves.”

How do you not?

After showing an inquiry video many summers back, Hunter asked how I got the students so interested. I oh-so-cutely replied "how do you not?"  Hunter has since made me realize that (a) that's a lame answer, (b) that's an important question and (c) I don't know the answer. I see the TE grant as trying to answer that question.

Today I subbed for intro physics labs, where they're proving that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection and Snell's law. It has been a *while* since I've been in a traditional lab. Probably 12 years ago (wow). -- This is the lab they're doing for 3 hours (verbatim); it is their first introduction to light rays; and it's a case study in how to make something not interesting:

Introduction. When a ray of light is incident on the boundary between two different media, part of the light is reflected and part is refracted, as illustrated below. What distinguishes the media is the relative speed of light in each. The velocity of light in medium 1 is c/n1 and the velocity of light in medium 2 is c/n2, where n is the so called index of refraction of the medium. Obviously the vacuum is a ‘medium’ with n=1. If the angle made by the incident ray with the normal to the boundary is θ1, then the angle made by the reflected ray with the normal (θR) will equal the incident ray angle:

θ1 = θR (1)

The angle θ2 of the refracted ray will be related to the incident ray angle (θ1) by:

n1sinθ1 = n2sinθ2 (2)

where n1 and n2 are the indices of refraction of the respective media. In this experiment we will investigate the validity of eq. (1) and eq. (2). 

The second equation describing refraction is also known as Snell's Law.

Procedure:
1.    Place the semicircle on a piece of clean paper and trace its outline on the paper. Mark on the paper the location of the midpoint of the flat face and draw the normal to the face passing through this midpoint.
2.    For 6 widely spaced angles... (etc.) Place a ‘dot’ on the paper directly below where the light strikes the triangle, using the triangle’s vertical edge as a guide.

Analysis.
 Question: Why is it vitally important that the laser ray strike the midpoint for all rays?
1.    Make a table with columns: | Ray # | sinθ1 | sinθR    | sinθ2

2.    Make plots from your data that will test the validity of eq. (1) and eq. (2).

It was DRUDGERY. I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. "What do we put in this column?" they would ask and I was so bored by this that I found it hard to want to get them to reason through it with me. "What do we plot?" "why?" I'd forgotten how awful it could be.

So, then, how does this lab make them (and me) so disinterested, while the inquiry class gets people arguing animatedly about all of these topics?

When we study refraction in inquiry, we begin by dissecting an eye -- we've looked at and made sense of the pinhole camera, and are starting to put together the idea that the eye functions, in part, like the pinhole camera -- but that this can't account for why objects are so clear (the pupil is big enough that things should be extreeeemly blurry). So then some groups turn to the lens and what it does.  They examine the "fry an ant spot" and sketch what the rays of light must be doing for such a spot to exist. They use phrases like "steeper angles bend more" and "straight-on rays don't bend" -- qualitatively describing some of Snell's law.  They draw these kinds of sketches, trying to figure out the relationship between the angles:

We're studying how we see, and refraction becomes part of that -- we don't just study "refraction."

some ideas:

in inquiry we're developing a narrative for light (including mechanism); people are drawn to narratives.
in physics lab they're doing data-entry; no one (?) is drawn to data entry.

in inquiry they're solving a puzzle
in physics lab they're learning the puzzle solution (?) but don't even know what the puzzle is.

Engestrom reading: in inquiry the objective is to figure out what light is doing so that we can make sense of our pinhole theaters or vision -- which leads to other observations we want to understand.
In physics lab, the objective is, as they state, to  "investigate the validity of eq. (1) and eq. (2)" -- except CLEARLY that's not the objective -- are they really examining the validity? if they find it's not valid, then what? - no. the point is (1) get points for a grade (could be true in my class, but the conversation isnt' graded) by (2) producing the required graphs.  I tried pointing out how images look distorted when you look through the acrylic, and used some chalk dust so we could really see the bending ray.  And for a minute a student looked at me, puzzled and said "why do we see the ray only when there's chalk dust?" - but then went back to working on the lab and had no other questions.

Pugh looks mainly at features of students (right?) - goal mastery orientation, etc. - rather than classrooms.


Some thoughts:
Read quickly through the readers-digesty-paper "Interest- The Curious Emotion" (I find it annoyingly written) -- but it includes the quote "Interest is thus a counterweight to feelings of uncertainty and anxiety (Kashdan, 2004)." -- which made me think about how to overcome stereotype threat by making things interesting.

Dentist

In inquiry, I often mention my professional life - that I have a grant with Brian, that I meet regularly with a writing group, and that I meet regularly with a reading group. I show them how, when I meet with my writing colleagues, we send a draft and instructions on how to best help us with that draft. (And then the extensive feedback I get from that group.)  And when we read an article, I show the google doc that my colleagues and I make of "questions we have about the reading/questions inspired by the reading" (I should also share screen shots of the whiteboards from the EP reading group!) -- I do this so that they have a sense that what I'm asking them to do with reading and writing isn't just a school-based practice, but is something to carry into their professional lives. It's also to show them a window into my life and the life of professors in general, to see that I take teaching very seriously, and they should too.  I never quite know how these comments go  over with them - if it makes an impact at all.

My dentist yesterday mentioned that she's in a reading group that includes my orthodontist and talked about a study they recently read and how it relates to my orthodonty (root resorption). I was so delighted to hear this, and think "if that's how students feel about me when I talk about my reading, writing and research, then this is a good thing to do."

Sensemaking

Some scattered thoughts on understanding images in pinhole theaters:

We've come up with some pretty good ways of drawing light ray diagrams -- straight lines from source to object, then reflects off of the object in a million directions, still traveling in straight lines, only a few of which go through the hole, and those land on the screen and make an upside down image.

But as Brian and I were talking today, we were noticing how, for some students, this isn't an explanation yet. In his class someone called "bullshit" on this describing an image. (I had a student a year back who similarly said, at this stage, "Am I the only one who's completely lost with this whole thing? Like I can't grasp any of this... Like none of this makes sense. Does none of this make sense? Does-- like everyone's talking about all these ideas and I literally have no idea what's happening. Like does the image go through the hole? Does it reflect through the foil? Like-- does anyone get what I'm saying?" - she's one of my all time favorite students.) And before the start of class on Monday, two students talked through the issue - "okay, I can draw these lines and I see how that makes it upside down and backwards, but I don't get it - does the light like pick up the image and throw it through the hole?"  And ultimately they got the idea by the start of class.

So drawing good diagrams doesn't mean that students really have developed an understanding of the ontology of an image (that's my diagnosis of the trouble - if you think an image is a thing flying through the air, then it's hard to make sense of these diagrams - and it's even hard to critique or talk about these diagrams in a meaningful way.  But they don't recognize that's the issue. I think of it like learning that i^2 = -1. You can't make sense of it and you don't even know what it could mean to say this number "exists" so you can't even critique this kind of meaningless definition for i.) 

As I talked to Brian I was thinking that using diagrams to predict things, instead of as posthoc explanations of observations (or even representations without much explanation), would force the issue of simply applying some rules v. really using them to make sense. But I don't know - b/c you can apply the rules for i and never quite know why it works. I do think there's something to this idea that the diagram should function as narrative, not just sketch, for its author.  And I'm not sure how to get that going. (I'd say 20 - 25% of the diagrams suggest the students aren't treating it as a narrative.- meaning it isn't  a story of how light creates an image.)

Anyway, I have this idea that tomorrow in class I'll ask students to sit in an area of the room (after talking about i?) -- maybe divide the room in half: (1) I can diagram things pretty well and see how that relates to the image - but there seems to be something missing; (2) I'm actively developing these ideas (out loud or silently) and they really help me make sense of why we wind up seeing what we see on the screen.  And see if group 2 can articulate or explain or something in such a way that group 1 gets it? - and then you can move from one area of the room to the other. (and we don't stop until everyone leaves group 1?)

Models of blurriness

Students had to diagram in their groups what happens when the hole increases in size that accounts for why the image gets blurrier. I jotted on the board the following ideas that came up, taken verbatim from students:

1. The bigger the hole, the more they [rays of light] intersect at multiple points.
2. [With a bigger hole] multiple rays are hitting at the same point on the screen.
3. [with a bigger hole, you will have] multiple overlapping images.

Two other ideas (not verbatim):

1. When a lot of light is allowed into the box, some of those light rays ricochet off the sides and walls of the box and the result is that the entire box is illuminated instead of creating just one image.
2. Since our eyes are adjusted to the dark, when we let in a lot of light we cannot respond to the really bright screen correctly. (That is, this is as much a problem of our eyes/brain as it is of the image cast onto the paper.)

Love these ideas. Want to think through this, perhaps with the lens of univocal v. dialogic.

Fall to-do list

Can't keep up! Falling behind! Quick moment to remind myself of what needs to be happening, mostly as it relates to research or classes related to research.

This week:

☐  Send complete book proposal to I.A.T. (thursday)
☐  Create job ad for bio & physics lecturer faculty. (thursday)

☐  Advertise for NSCI 321? (friday - email faculty)

☐  Develop portfolio homework for 321. (thursday)

☐  Rev. and resubmit responses to Deb. (friday)

☐  Edit, discuss survey with Brian (friday)

Next week:

☐  Finish revisions to the NOS paper... send to writing group for Friday

☐  Hire for next semester 321 (Emma? Kayla?)

☐  Transcribe amazing day of blurriness representations.
☐  Work on rev & resubmit.

 
Eventually:

✓  due Dec. 3rd - applications to buy lab materials.
☐  Chapter 3 of LSET - add instructor's guide/tips (this is perfect for long plane rides)
☐  Turn my poor little reject perc paper into a short PRST-PER paper
☐  Strengthen my Energy/Inhaling Calories paper with data

☐  iPad app.

☐  prep for 341 for spring - all digital...

☐  ... and apply for jobs. Yep.

Chico

I went to a dinner-with-the-professors event tonight in the freshmen dorms and, as a thank you gift, the faculty there were each given a mug. But the mug had been printed for an earlier event ("Scholarly Achievement Banquet 2012") and that title had been lightly sanded off the mug (though not entirely). On a good day, I love this kind of thing from my scrappy, underfunded university, and I think warmly of the earnest student employee sanding 50 mugs to hand to the professors who just ate some terrible cous cous with them. But today it just made me really sad.