November 10, Class Notes

Signal v. noise: "Our ability to tease the signal from the noise has not grown nearly as fast. As a result, we have plenty of data but lack the ability to extract truth from it and to build models that accurately predict the future that data portends ... we are fooled into thinking that random patterns are meaningful; we build models that are far more sensitive to our initial assumptions than we realize; we make approximations that are cruder than we realize; we focus on what is easiest to measure rather than on what is important; we are overconfident; we build models that rely too heavily on statistics, without enough theoretical understanding; and we unconsciously let biases based on expectation or self-interest affect our analysis."

Peer review:
why do it?
what can it do?
what can I get from it?
responsibility of the reviewer?

advantages include:
practice questioning
gaining new perspectives, advice on our writing
potential for self-reflection and analysis
learn about new styles for communicating
adopting the teacher perspective (how to give helpful criticism)
form of assessments
find out what others in the field are thinking

concerns include:
worrying about how comments will be received
uncomfortable
need tact and thoughtfulness

Bracey reminders:

• show me the data
• do the math
• are groups/situations comparable? (the value of context/ecology of schools)
• beware simple explanation for complex phenomena
• correlations are not causations (what else might account for the outcomes?)
• ask 'so what?'

Statistical v. practical significance - p <.05
Even if a study is proven effective, is it worth implementing?

Identity claims

Validity claims

• objective (visual)
• subjective (philosophical)
• normative (cultural)

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For our next class, please read the first three episodes of Mr. Palomar ("Mr. Palomar at the beach").   Some suggestions to answer the question,"how should I read Mr. Palomar?" follow.  Please contact me for further in depth discussion.

Focus on how validity claims and truth conditions structure the experience of Mr. Palomar.  Think of his escapade as data gathering and reflection on the data he gathers.  Why does he find what he does?  Consider what conditions - subjective and normative - lead him to see an objective condition.  There will be a constant interplay between which validity claims are backgrounded (tacit, taken-for-granted, implicit) and the conditions that lead Mr. Palomar to meaning.  Help the class poke around with that process to get inside his understanding of the scene.

Focus on the similarity between what Mr. Palomar experiences and your experience in the classroom.  Granted, the comparison will not be exact.  Yet the struggles he has to make sense of his experience do mirror in some way the struggles you may have in coming to understand your teaching.  Italo gifts him with a talent for problematizing his experience.  That skill plays out in every entry.  He turns what might otherwise seem ordinary into a cascading set of questions that fuel his thoughts on the data before him and of which he participates.  He is the ultimate example of a participant observer, making sense of his setting as he participates in it.  Echoes perk up here to

• van Manen: "... tactful acting I demonstrate unwittingly what I can do ... thoughtful reflection I discover what I can do ... my pedagogical nature ..." and to
• Schon: "... they must plunge into the doing, and try to educate themselves before they know what it is they're trying to learn ..."

Remember, the reading is structured to enable you all to make sense of research analysis.  The book is a vehicle for bringing out complexity, of making the invisible visible. What do you learn about perception from each entry?  What rings true in the questions Mr. Palomar asks and the situation his perceptions put him in?  How does examining Mr. Palomar in each entry alter how you process the experience in schools?  What now will you look for or how will you look?