Facts do not enlighten

Teachers,

An op-ed from the NYTimes confirms the view that reason is not a tool of truth-seeking, but rather one of argumentation.  Even 'facts' get disregarded: "You might expect that people’s views would soften and that divisions between groups would get smaller. That is not what usually happens. On the contrary, people’s original beliefs tend to harden and the original divisions typically get bigger. Balanced presentations can fuel unbalanced views ... What explains this? The answer is called “biased assimilation,” which means that people assimilate new information in a selective fashion. When people get information that supports what they initially thought, they give it considerable weight. When they get information that undermines their initial beliefs, they tend to dismiss it."

Biased assimilation acts to filter out what we neither expect nor want to hear.  Unfortunately, the 'wanting' occurs well below the level of cognitive awareness; we may not realize how selective our perceptive and cognitive processes are.

Fallibility of memory

Now, from the NYTimes, this article supports some of our previous reading and work on reflection.  Some choices quotes:

• Yet scientists have long cautioned that the brain is not a filing cabinet, storing memories in a way that they can be pulled out, consulted and returned intact. Memory is not so much a record of the past as a rough sketch that can be modified even by the simple act of telling the story.
• Why is a witness’s account so often unreliable? Partly because the brain does not have a knack for retaining many specifics and is highly susceptible to suggestion. “Memory is weak in eyewitness situations because it’s overloaded,” said Barbara Tversky, a psychology professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York ... Hundreds of studies have cataloged a long list of circumstances that can affect how memories are recorded and replayed, including the emotion at the time of the event, the social pressures that taint its reconstruction, even flourishes unknowingly added after the fact ...While most of us tend to think memory works like a video recorder, it is actually more like a grainy slide show. Lost details, including imaginary ones, often are added later. 
• Sometimes we miss details because we weren’t paying attention, but sometimes we are concentrating too hard on something else. Nothing is as obvious as it seems.
• Whether in a story told in a courtroom or at a dinner table, the mind is sometimes prone to blur the distinction between reality and fantasy. Brain scans taken as people “recall” something they did not actually see have many similarities to the brain dwelling on an actual memory ... “That’s one of the striking findings of the studies,” said Daniel Schacter, a psychology professor at Harvard. Whether an event is real or imagined, “many structures involved in the coding and retrieving are the same" ... All this makes sense, he said, when you consider the purpose of memory. He and his colleagues believe that memory is designed not just to keep track of what has happened, but to offer a script for something that might.
• Because the brain uses memories for mental dress rehearsal, we are not wired to retain every facet of an event, scientists say. We don’t have to. A general framework is all that’s necessary to keep from getting lost, or find food, or know what to do when a storm is coming.

Class notes, M S17

Teachers,

Below you will find a distilled reflection on the ideas we discussed in class.  Please contribute more if I have filtered out some crucial point.

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Making the invisible visible - paying attention to those elements we might normally filter out of attention; to do so, we might need to make the visible invisible - consciously ignoring the habitual and obvious

The critical eye of observation - noticing changes, differences, newness; do we need to consciously focus in order for our critical eye to operate?

Expectations, conditionings, use - all play a part in how we filter attention; they lead us to make connections, to prime us to things certain ways and to activate certain schema

Our perspective is shaped by physical properties, everything from what space we inhabit in a location to our own feelings, emotions and perspectives (this is the heart of phenomenology - for we experience in full, though our perspective is but one dimension of the innumerable ways of seeing).  Our backgrounds, our desires and intentions, who we are at any given time (and who we expect to be and who we expect others to expect us to be) and what we think the situation demands all prime us to attend to various things in diverse ways.

The key is to be aware of how we are responding to an environment, to a phenomenon, of our biases and expectations.  Only be paying attention to how and to what we do pay attend are we able to exercise more authenticity in our observations and experiencing of a situation.

You raised a flurry of terrific points about your observation process.  These include:

• analyzing while data collecting (Jay)
• how expectations, conditioning shape attention (Kelly)
• direct attention in an abnormal way - noticing the implicit and taken-for-granted (Rachel)
• pre-set patterns 'prime' us to notice things, even if they do not exist (Kelsie)
• emotions may over-determine perceptions (Jessica)
• noticing how the atmosphere/vibe affects you (Jacob)
• seeking out information/patterns rather than noticing them as they arise (Aimee)
• focusing on things that disturb or challenged expectations (Corrie)
• paying attention to others can make us reflect on ourselves (Andrew)

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Notes from the readings worth considering:

memory reconsolidation 

• the act of remembering changes the memory
• 'misremembering until it made sense' - making our memories cohere
• "Based on his research, Bartlett concluded that the standard view of human memory – it’s a vast repository of stable facts – was completely wrong. “Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces,” he wrote. “It is an imaginative reconstruction.”"
• "Reconsolidation constantly alters our recollections, as we rehearse nostalgias and suppress pain. We repeat stories until they’re stale, rewrite history in favor of the winners, and tamp down our sorrows with whiskey. “Once people realize how memory actually works, a lot of these beliefs that memory shouldn’t be changed will seem a little ridiculous,” Nader says. “Anything can change memory. This technology isn’t new. It’s just a better version of an existing biological process.”"
• from Sean Carroll: "We tend to assume that the brain must be like a computer — when we want to access a memory, we simply pull up a “file” stored somewhere on the brain’s hard drive, and take a look at its contents. But that’s not it at all. Schacter believes that pieces of data relevant to any particular memory — times, images, sounds — are stored piecemeal in different parts of the brain. When we want to “remember” something, another part of the brain assembles these pieces into a (hopefully) coherent picture. It’s like running a new simulation every time you need a memory, and it’s the same thing we do when we try to imagine some event in the future.  Everyone has heard that memories can be unreliable, but many of us don’t appreciate the extent to which that is true. It’s not the case that “real” memories are stored once and for all deep in the darkest recesses of the brain, and it’s just a matter of digging them up. False memories — conjured from any number of sources, from gradual embellishment to direct suggestion by others — seem precisely as vivid and real to us as accurate memories do. For a good reason: the brain uses the same tools to construct the memory from the available raw materials. A novel and a history book look the same on the printed page."
• from The Guardian: "Memories are not filed away in the brain like so many video cassettes, to be slotted in and played when it's time to recall the past. Sci-fi and fantasy fictions might try to persuade us otherwise, but memories are not discrete entities that can be taken out of one person's head, Dumbledore-style, and distilled for someone else's viewing. They are mental reconstructions, nifty multimedia collages of how things were, that are shaped by how things are now. Autobiographical memories are stitched together as and when they are needed from information stored in many different neural systems. That makes them curiously susceptible to distortion, and often not nearly as reliable as we would like ...  In storyboarding an autobiographical memory, the brain combines fragments of sensory memory with a more abstract knowledge about events, and reassembles them according to the demands of the present. The memory researcher Martin Conway has described how two forces go head to head in remembering. The force of correspondence tries to keep memory true to what actually happened, while the force of coherence ensures that the emerging story fits in with the needs of the self, which often involves portraying the ego in the best possible light ... How many more of our memories are a story to suit the self? There can be no doubt that our current emotions and beliefs shape the memories that we create. "

adaptation; or, 'why we tune out' - For all of our senses, when a certain input is constant we gradually get used to it

believing is seeing

attention may be different than awareness

motivated reasoning - thinking is like a lawyer (winning arguments), not a scientist (exploring, rationally, the 'truth')

• from Cordelia Fine: "... we humans quickly develop an irrational loyalty to our beliefs, and work hard to find evidence that supports those opinions and to discredit, discount or avoid information that does not."
• from Joe Keohane: "In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information."

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For class S, O6:

• Write down fifty things about one trip/experience/chore.
• Keep a daily consumption or purchase log (for a week or between class sessions)
• Create a simple survey of at least five questions.  Give it to a sampling of people.  Document their answers in a way that is interesting and readable (like a graph or chart, spreadsheet, pictogram).
• Read Max van Manen "Beyond assumptions" and speech by Donald Schon (pdf's to be emailed, with guiding questions)
• We will return to the implications of 'motivated reasoning' as well

Class notes, S S15

Teachers,

Thanks for the moments of brilliance (truly), insight and thoughtfulness.  You helped me make sense of the ideas.  Below is a brief synpopted version of our discussion.  Please comment, if you need to share, or add if I have not done justify to the depth of meaning you experienced.

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Plato, "Allegory of the Cave"

Why does the prisoner, now able to see reality, willingly go back into the cave?

• "pity" - compassion, empathy, mercy, 'provoked' to go back
• relationships/others - they are his people; no one else to share knowledge with?
• progress to stay out; retreat to return?

How does the prisoner get freed in the first place?

• liberated by another; 'compelled' to leave (dragging and screaming)
• can we free ourselves?
• difficulty of seeing/experiencing another's perspective
• difficulty of sharing your your perspective to those not interested in experiencing it

By 'freed,' what could we mean?

• to see/experience something new, or in a new way
• to experience the broader, fuller, more 'real'
• to change; to become someone new
• the ability to choose to experience differently - can we?  Do we always need be liberated against our will?

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Teacher Inquiry is driven on certain factors:

• the social and cultural contexts in which teaching unfolds
• giving voice/form to the rich diversity of experience (of both the learner and, especially, the teacher)
• "... detailed, meaning-inflected and locally specific understandings that a certain kind of ethnographic understanding brings forward" (from UnderstandingSociety, on Clifford Geetz)
• psychological dimension of experience (What does it mean to have had the experience?)
• as a narrative process, it means telling your story

Teacher Inquiry will call upon several foundational understandings:

• Ethnography- learning to understand a different culture, becoming part of a new community; learning to negotiate objective, subjective and normative worlds with students;
  Who are these people?  How do they think?  What does it mean for me to become one of them?
  emic/otic perspectives (insider/outsider); what meaning the experience has for the (other) in addition to your meaning; Value Claims; metic: voice on an outsider to a culture; otic: perspective of an outsider trying to represent natives; emic: perspective of natives to a culture
• Phenomenology - the reflective process, bringing language to your experiences, becoming aware of the biases and filters that shape understanding, paying attention to your experiences
  What is this phenomenon?  How does my perspective determine what I experience of it?
• Epistemology - a theory of language and the systems by which we make meaning; questions of participants; How do I know I know what I know?

'theory of mind'  - how we struggle to make sense of another person's decisions or actions; what we intuit about what they are thinking and experiencing that would cause them to act in a certain way; we have a tendency to impose our thinking onto their experience and evaluate them accordingly; "we literally theorize about the minds that are causing ostensible behavior"

How to avoid 'epistemic closure' - Inquiry stance on your practice, your ideas and beliefs, the meanings you bring to an encounter with others; no assumptions; questioning our premises

making the invisible visible (Spindler, 1963)

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for Monday, S17, please bring in an object of importance to you. Others will handle it, so be circumspect about its value and another's reaction to it.

Guidelines for article critique

Teachers,

A reminder that your first Article Critique is due NOT this coming Monday; it is due Monday, September 24 instead. We have shifted a week in our readings, as well. Please keep an eye on this blog for other updates.

To give you some guidance on your writing, we will spend some time this Saturday (S15) working in the WU journal database. Below, you will find some guidelines to help you along the process.

As always, comments and questions are welcome.

Thanks.

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Article Critique Guidelines

This writing provides you with the opportunity to critically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a topic related to equity of education.  This process will allow you to think about a variety of issues that you might be interested in learning more about for possible teaching application.  It will also provide you with the opportunity to do some guided work on reading and analyzing existing literature, a skill that teachers need to have to determine what already is known about a particular issue in order to improve practice.

Selecting your articles:

You will choose among several types of articles:

1.     educational research piece from journals such as Theory and Research in Social Education, The Elementary School Journal, The Reading Teacher, …

2.     practitioner piece from journals and magazines such as Social Studies, Educational Leadership, Language Arts, …

3.     an example of teacher research from websites or journals such as:

http://oldweb.madison.k12.wi.us/sod/car/carhomepage.html

Writing your critiques:

A written critique is a detailed analysis and means that you engage in the process of evaluating the article in a thorough and an analytical way.  This is not simply a summary or “book report” of what you read in the article.  (Just because it is a critique does not mean that it is critical in a negative sense – you can have a positive, negative or mixed reaction to the piece.)  After reading the article and making notes about the strengths and weaknesses of the argument the author makes, you will write a critique of the text.  The following questions can be used to guide you in thinking about the points you want to make.

*Please include a bibliographic reference for the article as well as a short abstract of the main content of the piece (either one provided or one that you draft yourself).  The total length of the paper will be in the 3page range.

Guiding questions:

1. Consider the argument that the author makes in the text.  What do you consider to be the strengths of this piece?  What do you consider to be the weaknesses?  Be sure to use specific evidence from the piece to support your claim.
2. What does the piece offer you as a teacher to improve or challenge your practice?
3. What additional questions can this raise for you about this issue or about related issues about which you are now curious?

**If you need additional support in understanding how to write a critique, check out the steps provided on the following website:

http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/critique.html

Consider this stage process as a template:

Step 1. Analyze the text

The following questions may help you analyze the text:

* What is the author's main point?

* What is the author's purpose?

* Who is the author's intended audience?

* What arguments does the author use to support the main point?

* What evidence does the author present to support the arguments?

* What are the author's underlying assumptions or biases?

Step 2. Evaluate the text

After you have read the text, you can begin to evaluate the author's ideas. The following questions provide some ideas to help you evaluate the text:

* Is the argument logical?

* Is the text well-organized, clear, and easy to read?

* Are the author's facts accurate?

* Have important terms been clearly defined?

* Is there sufficient evidence for the arguments?

* Do the arguments support the main point?

* Is the text appropriate for the intended audience?

* Does the text present and refute opposing points of view?

* Does the text help you understand the subject?

* Are there any words or sentences that evoke a strong response from you? What are those words or sentences? What is your reaction?

* What is the origin of your reaction to this topic? When or where did you first learn about it? Can you think of people, articles, or discussions that have influenced your views? How might these be compared or contrasted to this text?

* What questions or observations does this article suggest? That is, what does the article make you think about?

Step 3. Plan and write your critique

Write your critique in standard essay form. It is generally best not to follow the author's organization when organizing your analysis, since this approach lends itself to summary rather than analysis. Begin with an introduction that defines the subject of your critique and your point of view. Defend your point of view by raising specific issues or aspects of the argument. Conclude your critique by summarizing your argument and re-emphasizing your opinion.

* You will first need to identify and explain the author's ideas. Include specific passages that support your description of the author's point of view.

* Offer your own opinion. Explain what you think about the argument. Describe several points with which you agree or disagree.

* For each of the points you mention, include specific passages from the text (you may summarize, quote, or paraphrase) that provide evidence for your point of view.

* Explain how the passages support your opinion.

Source of information: Rosen, Leonard J. and Laurence Behrens, eds. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook. 1994.

http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/critique.html

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Article Critique model text

Some have requested a mentor text to guide your article reviews.  So here is an idea: I will post one that I have written and allow you to critique my critique.  The goal for this form of peer review is to enhance the writing.  Please offer questions and comments in that vein.  I like this open-source process for rooting out bad arguments, inconsistent thoughts, incomprehensible language, mistaken assumptions, poor analysis and other forms of writing habits.

Positives might be nice, as well.

(For those of you uninterested in reading my work in progress, here is a just-too-brief example of an article critique).

Thanks for your help.

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Kahan, D, Braman, D. and Jenkins-Smith, H. (2010) “Cultural cognition of scientific consensus” in Journal of risk research (in press)

*

Abstract: (from authors)Why do members of the public disagree—sharply and persistently—about facts on which expert scientists largely agree? We designed a study to test a distinctive explanation: the cultural cognition of scientific consensus. The “cultural cognition of risk” refers to the tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values. The study presents both correlational and experimental evidence confirming that cultural cognition shapes individuals’ beliefs about the existence of scientific consensus, and the process by which they form such beliefs, relating to climate change, the disposal of nuclear wastes, and the effect of permitting concealed possession of handguns. The implications of this dynamic for science communication and public policy-making are discussed.

*

“Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth”

Archimedes

Why do segments of the population so easily disagree on public policy despite the presence of “steady and massive accumulation of scientific evidence” and consensus among experts?  The authors of “Cultural cognition of scientific evidence,” from a yet to be released issue of Journal of risk research, present a “novel explanation” for the tendency of individuals to assimilate new information to their preexisting beliefs.  They provide correlational and experimental evidence that “cultural cognition,” one’s background worldview and normative values, represents how new information is understood by individuals in a way more determinate than logic and reason.  They conclude,

“Individuals systematically overestimate the degree of scientific support for positions they are culturally predisposed to accept as a result of a cultural availability effect that influences how readily they can recall instances of expert endorsement of those positions.”

In other words, perception is always and already biased.  Let us unpack the background, methodology and results of this study to get a stronger sense of why this is so.

Background

The authors start by framing a problem of public dialogue regarding science,

“The problem, it seems, is not that members of the public are unexposed or indifferent to what scientists say, but rather that they disagree about what scientists are telling them.”

They go on to explain why they take up the lens of “cultural cognition” as a hypothesis for this reflexive position-taking.  This theory, “a collection of psychological mechanisms that dispose individuals selectively to credit or dismiss evidence … that fit values they share with others,” emerges from a nexus of three existing ideas.  The availability heuristic refers to the tendency of individuals to “more readily recall instances of experts taking the position that is consistent with their cultural predisposition.”  Working memory has a limited size.  When thinking about an issue, people juggle only so much information at once.  The availability of certain kinds of information thus weights their decision-making more heavily.

Add to this factor a disposition for biased assimilation of information.  Thinking about an issue may result in a kind of evidence seeking, for data to fit into existing schema.  One reason for this narrowing of acceptable data concerns identity-protective motivations “to conform one’s belief to those of like-mind others in order to avoid dissonance and protect social standing.”  Think of identity as a kind of normal state of being, without conscientious attempt to perform for others.  This more or less unreflective thinking implicitly pulls into view information that does not shock the mind.  Dissonance-creating information is ignored, allowing a kind of cognitive restfulness.  Put another way, it hurts too much to think.

Together, these three dimensions of perception lead to over-representing information sources in individual’s mental inventories that align with a preexisting belief.  The predisposition accounts for a disproportionate share of confirming information.

Methodology and Results

The authors pose this thesis of cultural cognition as the reason for public dissensus.  To test this, they set up a study with two components.  Using a sample of 1500 individuals who roughly represent American socio-economic demographics, the authors use a correlational survey on preexisting beliefs among their subjects and then an experimental survey to assay responses to scenarios aligned with and diametrical to these beliefs.  The results are analyzed in two ways. First, a preliminary quick scan of the surveys provides a macro-view on their thesis.  Then a multivariate analysis (basically, a computer-based algorithm that transforms the survey results into numbers and crunches them into statistics) detects micro-level significance.

In all instances of analysis, the results confirm the original thesis.  While the range and degree of confirmation varies widely, all outcomes provide statistically significant evidence (the outcomes could not have happened by chance) of  “a strong correlation between individuals’ cultural values and their perceptions of scientific consensus.”

Commentary

“Cultural cognition of scientific consensus” underscores the view that dialogue is riven from the start with obstacles of perception.  This article has several serious threats to its validity.  One could argue that the evidence from this study is itself subject to the same forces this study attempts to grapple, demonstrating the obstacles of perception by failing as a piece of research (a fact that is philosophically intriguing, though of limited practical use).  Or, one could demonstrate how surveys used might over-determine the authors’ beliefs (by allowing for only two diametrical points of view; the middle vanishes, along with nuance).  And the failure of the researchers to address, much less explain, how prior understanding of their subjects majorly skew the survey responses.  Further, one could point out how the use of statistics to articulate the process of human thinking inherently misses the actual scope of human experience.  This means that responses are a third order of thinking - original thought, explanation of original thought, response to survey in a way to present original thought in line with researchers aims (the so-called Hawthorne effect).  All these criticisms (and more: consider also he unquestioned representativeness of the sample) do put a drag on the reach of the conclusions presented in the study.  However, the underlying workings of cultural cognition, confirmed with at least a face valid confidence as they appear in this study, do provide a graspable structure for ways to approach the dynamics of understanding. 

This aspect is vital for educators and others working in the public sphere. The challenge for the teacher is immense.  As the authors write of a typical student,

“… because of culturally biased information search and culturally biased assimilation, she is likely to attend to the information in a way that reinforces her prior beliefs and affective orientation … the same predisposition that informs her prior (beliefs) will also be unconsciously shaping her ability to recognize an assign weight to all manner of evidence, including the opinions of scientists.”

Cognitive tendencies filter perceptions. To reach each other, individuals must take overt steps to negotiate the bearings of their common world; shared experience has to be explicitly named and agreed upon at a fundamental level.  For teachers, this means structuring learning environments that invite students to investigate the ways they (both student and teacher) bias information.  Statements of fact need to be broken down into components of normative and subjective experience (Carspecken, 1990).  From simple reflexive opinions to layered rational replies, student dialogue represents the topsoil of understanding.  It is the effortful digging into the cultural valence of thinking – “communicators must attend to the cultural meaning as well as the scientific content of information” – that provides a platform for the kinds of critical thinking ostensibly sought in classrooms today.  Put another way, the very values of judgment that produce meaning must be kept open lest individuals close down onto piece-meal, fragmentary beliefs (Readings, 1996).

The authors do not intend so, but their work further erodes the conception of schooling based on the ideal of accumulation.  In practice, this conception treats students as self-activating vacuum cleaners; when they are ready to get to the business of knowledge consumption, an internal switch starts the sucking.  The effects of cultural cognition brings awareness to the shakiness of the ground underneath.  Communities – including districts, schools, even classrooms – must first recognize how divergently the world spins for its members.  Attempts to harmonize the common space each member occupies must precede knowledge acquisition.  Put differently, educators must seek to understand the experiences of their students from within the students’ point of view (van Manen, 1990), and help each do the same with all others.  They must start with the proposition that unpacked (and perhaps un-unpackable) belief structures carry students, not the other way around.  Without giving reason to students and taking for granted the inviolable presence of an active subjective rationality (Schön), teachers will compound the dissensus at the heart of the study under review.

   Archimedes never found a place to stand.  Schools have the potential to give up his futile search, and instead lead students to examine the taken-for-granted ground of their individual experience.  

References

Carspecken, P. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research. New York: Routledge

Readings, B. (1996). The university in ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Schön, D. (1987). “Educating the reflective practitioner.” 1987 AERA presentation.  (http://resources.educ.queensu.ca/ar/schon87.htm)

van Manen, M. (1990). “Beyond assumptions: shifting the limits of action research.” Theory into Practice, vol. xxix, no. 3

Readings for M S17

Teachers,

As we rejigger the schedule, we need to relate readings.  Pay no attention to what is on the syllabus at this moment.  For class on Saturday, September 15, we will address you initial data gathering work and discuss Plato's "allegory of the cave.'  For Monday, September 17, please link through and process the following article on cognitive biases.  They are short and related; plus, they build on our discussion on consciousness begun last year in the Equity course.

As always, questions and comments are welcome.

Thanks.
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Barry Rithoz presents a list of the "ten most common cognitive errors"

Jonah Lehrer

• The Eureka hunt, from the New Yorker
• from his blog, "Learning to forget"

Sean Carrol, blogging at Discover, "Remembering the past is like imagining the future"

from the BBC, on why we tune out

from ScienceDaily

• "Believing is seeing; thoughts color perception"
• "Attention makes sensory signals stand out against background noise"
• "Seeing without looking"
• "Attention and awareness uncoupled"

on 'motivated reasoning'

• from the New York Times
• and again
• and again again
• from the Boston Globe

from The Guardian (London), "The story of the self; how reliable are our memories?"