Teachers,
An article that gets to the essentials of bias:
"Fawcett is assuming that bias means ‘dishonesty’ where people deliberately make choices for their own advantage against what they know to be a better course of action, or ‘sloppiness’ where people don’t fully think through the issue. But bias, as you can find out from picking up any social psychology paper from the past century, is where incentives change our behaviour usually without us having insight into the presence or effect of the influencer."
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Class Notes, MJ 7
Teachers,
Welcome back.
First, an article from the WSJ on deception with math: "Other research has shown that even those who should be especially clear-sighted about numbers—scientific researchers, for example, and those who review their work for publication—are often uncomfortable with, and credulous about, mathematical material."
If reading an article and you feel like you are too undereducated or not smart to comprehend, remember this: " "The fact that these scientifically sloppy papers continue to be published means that the authors, reviewers and editors cannot comprehend the statistics, that they have not read the paper carefully, or both," said Prof. Vaux, of the University of Melbourne in Australia."
It gives a perceptive quote, one to carry with us into schools: ""Math makes a research paper look solid, but the real science lies not in math but in trying one's utmost to understand the real workings of the world," Prof. Eriksson said."
Once again, you demonstrate the gift for bring into discussion valuable insights and crucial ideas. Some highlights:
Welcome back.
First, an article from the WSJ on deception with math: "Other research has shown that even those who should be especially clear-sighted about numbers—scientific researchers, for example, and those who review their work for publication—are often uncomfortable with, and credulous about, mathematical material."
If reading an article and you feel like you are too undereducated or not smart to comprehend, remember this: " "The fact that these scientifically sloppy papers continue to be published means that the authors, reviewers and editors cannot comprehend the statistics, that they have not read the paper carefully, or both," said Prof. Vaux, of the University of Melbourne in Australia."
It gives a perceptive quote, one to carry with us into schools: ""Math makes a research paper look solid, but the real science lies not in math but in trying one's utmost to understand the real workings of the world," Prof. Eriksson said."
Once again, you demonstrate the gift for bring into discussion valuable insights and crucial ideas. Some highlights:
- "Meaning questions" as seen by van Manen attempt a phenomenological approach to give voice and meaningfulness to the experience of your teaching. Two strong types of questions are "What happens when I ... ?" which studies the effects and consequences of a particular pedagogical approach or decision, and "What is my pedagogical nature?" which examines how you respond over time to the constant change, the stochastic nature, of teaching (in other words, stuff happens; how do you respond?).
- Mr. Palomar gave us examples of how culture, norms and communication ground much of our relationships to people and things in the world.
- We often live out scripts, ritual-like behavior with others, rather than respond in agentic ways. We often project meaning unto of the acts and messages of others, either because of our expectations of the relationships, the history we share with the other person or people we think that they represent, or, more intersubjectively, because we demonstrate empathy and make the effort to position-take with the other.
- We often detect meaning that may not be there. Do we pay attention to what people say, or to the contexts from which those messages emerge? How well do we pay attention to the distortions in our messages, assuming other's easily grasp our intentions and meaning-expectations?
- We communicate often through the use of concepts (schema) that may not withstand scrutiny. How well do others understand the concepts we use? At what point to we take a normal, taken-for-granted approach to what we experience and communicate, and at what point do we need to problematize experience and the communication process? How often are we victims of the 'focusing illusion,' where we take for granted that what experience is shared by others in its value and importance?
- Article critique and the peer review processes do not demand that you be an expert on the literature or the field. Rather, at best, they test your ability to explain what you understand. It is not necessarily the place to attempt to correct the authors' thinking or prove them in error. Instead, it works to give researchers a constraint. Whether the writing lacks clarity or language that attempts to persuade rather than inform is used, or the authors skimp on the methodological rigor (or description) or ... The critic and the peer reviewer offer a form of data. The clarity of your effort elucidate your understandings, and the context/background which you bring to your attempts, is in service of science.
For class this upcoming Saturday (January 12), please prepare Mr. Palomar 1.3.1, 1.3.2, and 1.3.3. Focus again on the kinds of data Mr. P gathers and his introspect method of analyzing the data. What are some of the cognitive errors he makes?
Thanks.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Class notes, S D15
Daniel Kahneman, at TEDtalks: experiencing v. remembering self
The question of the self as a teacher - 'what is my pedagogical nature?' (van Manen). What are my biases and cognitive errors? How do I filter out parts of my experience and allow others in? What contexts do I occupy? What are my intentions (my goals and pursuits)? What are my intensions (the things I attend to and of which I am aware)?
The experiencing self lives 'in' the moment. The remembering self tells stories about the moments it has lived. The experiencing self is lost, voiceless, ignored by the self constructed through memory. And, as our earlier study of the fallibility of memory explains, how reliable is that self?
We remember experiences through the changes that take place, significant moments of the experience and the way experiences end. We have difficulty accepting the complexity of life - how willing are we to inquire into our manifold 'meaning questions'? We have difficulty not focusing on those significant moments (the focusing illusion), taking them as representative of the larger whole. As Bracey reminds us to ask, do they?
Data, information, experienced comes through a continuum between completely raw to completely processed. If consciousness is itself a filter, then our perceptions are always already processed; critical thought - problematizing experience - demonstrates that ongoing processing never ends.
The teaching cycle and the reflection cycle are, thus, the same. We teach ('unwittingly' per Schon); we reflect (multiple sources; multiple perspectives; position-taking, empathy, examining validity claims); we plan (the best of what we know now); we teach; we reflect; we plan ...
The question of the self as a teacher - 'what is my pedagogical nature?' (van Manen). What are my biases and cognitive errors? How do I filter out parts of my experience and allow others in? What contexts do I occupy? What are my intentions (my goals and pursuits)? What are my intensions (the things I attend to and of which I am aware)?
The experiencing self lives 'in' the moment. The remembering self tells stories about the moments it has lived. The experiencing self is lost, voiceless, ignored by the self constructed through memory. And, as our earlier study of the fallibility of memory explains, how reliable is that self?
We remember experiences through the changes that take place, significant moments of the experience and the way experiences end. We have difficulty accepting the complexity of life - how willing are we to inquire into our manifold 'meaning questions'? We have difficulty not focusing on those significant moments (the focusing illusion), taking them as representative of the larger whole. As Bracey reminds us to ask, do they?
Data, information, experienced comes through a continuum between completely raw to completely processed. If consciousness is itself a filter, then our perceptions are always already processed; critical thought - problematizing experience - demonstrates that ongoing processing never ends.
The teaching cycle and the reflection cycle are, thus, the same. We teach ('unwittingly' per Schon); we reflect (multiple sources; multiple perspectives; position-taking, empathy, examining validity claims); we plan (the best of what we know now); we teach; we reflect; we plan ...
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
2011 TIMSS and PISA scores
A great post on the latest standardized test scores, by Yong Zhao of UO.
He does go the full bracey (are the differences in scores statistically significant), though he breaks down their meaning (and practical significance) in user-friendly language.
He does go the full bracey (are the differences in scores statistically significant), though he breaks down their meaning (and practical significance) in user-friendly language.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Class notes, M D3
Teachers,
"A reflection"
Teacher Research as
"A reflection"
Teacher Research as
- phenomenology - What am I experiencing?
- epistemology - How do I know I know what I know?
- ethnography - What is it like to be them?
Mr. Palomar
As an introduction to the book and its contribution to your experience in educational research, let me outline much of what you did great work articulating yesterday (with much thanks to Dr. Phil Carspecken).
Observing a wave (1.1.1)
In this first chapter, Calvino explores sense perception of the physical world, with social and cultural factors backgrounded as much as possible. All we basically have in this chapter is Mr. Palomar and "waves." You neatly noticed that we cannot escape culture, we can only background it. It still operates by supplying categories, words, and analogies for sense perception.
Although Calvino could have chosen any physical object or phenomenon to investigate for the purposes of analyzing sense perception, he picked a rather difficult one: waves forming near an ocean shore and moving to break on a beach. Why start his book on experience here?
One possible reason is a belief, on the part of Calvino, that an examination of wave perception will illuminate common structures of all sense perception, including and more significantly the taken-for-granted features of the more common. By focusing on the most purely visual entry in the entire book, Calvino helps call attention to horizon of factors that constitute the objective, visual world. Or as we might understand it, “making the invisible visible." The difficulties involved in examining perception of waves are simply easier to see than these same difficulties present when examining a bowl, pencil, rock and other physical objects that display consistent shape. Here, then, he allows
the reader to explore the phenomenological narrative of experience, that of Mr. Palomar.
From this perspective, the ocean symbolizes how reality outside of human knowledge and experience is pressed into various shapes and patterns by the act of perception. When we look, meaning comes through the schema that orders experience in our minds. The ocean, for Mr. Palomar, is like Kant’s notion of the “thing in-itself”; something we do not have direct access to because it is already interpreted by the time we are conscious of it. Structures of perception filter experience through language, culture, socio-economic and educational background - structures located within the apparatus of perceiving rather than in the objects themselves. Here again, we hear echoes of van Manen, reminding of the responsibility to "make thoughtful sense of the meaning the child's experience has for the child as well as for the adult."
Waves may be taken to represent any perceptual object that arises from the interaction of our perceptual apparatus with the world around us. The ways in which we perceive waves reveal processes and structures involved in all object perception. Like Tiffany thinking like her daughter, how we see functions from what we know.
What are some of the things that emerge from Mr. Palomar's efforts that might throw light upon all sense perception?
Notice that Mr. Palomar, like all of us, is capable of perceiving waves unproblematically. It is only when he tries consciously to perceive a wave, as some sort of well defined object, that questions and problems arise. It is only when he restricts his holistic modes of experience in order to really focus on just his visual perceptions that difficulties come up. The whole thrust of phenomenological philosophy made use of this sort of thing: common and unproblematical perceptions do become problematical and interesting when one subjects the experience of perception to careful scrutiny. This happens whether one investigates how we perceive grass, stones, trees, ideas, emotions, memories, music, waves ...., anything and everything!
Waves, like all sense objects, are "seen" as foregrounds within a horizon of contrasts: other waves, the shore, the sky. All objects of perception appear against a background of apperception. Apperception means, ap-perception or "perceived-with". The apperceptual background is necessarily perceived with the perceptual foreground because the contrast between foreground and background is necessary to give form. Waves are more difficult to see as discrete objects partly because their backgrounds often shift to disrupt the foreground over time.
The holistic dimension to sense perceptions is not directly perceived but must be arrived at through a reflection. Or, as van Manen writes, “And yet it only through the quest of fundamental reflection that we can become more fully who we are ...” Analysis disrupts the taken-for-granted; per William James, "with critical philosophy, havoc is made of everything."
This line bears more general philosophical lesson to be learned from Mr. Palomar's study of waves on page 6: "If it were not for his impatience to reach a complete, definitive conclusion of his visual operation, looking at waves would be a very restful exercise for him and could save him from neurasthenia, heart attack, and gastric ulcer. And it could perhaps be the key to mastering the world's complexity by reducing it to its simplest mechanism."
Science has basically been an effort to reduce the universe to its simplest mechanisms. It has been an effort to do so that begins with sense experiences. It must take certain types of sense experience to be unproblematical. Waves would not be chosen as a beginning place for the assumptions made by most scientists regarding unproblematical sense experience. But the exercise of examining waves could be used by a phenomenologist or by a postmodern philosopher to cast doubt on all sense experience and thus put the project of science into question. The point is not to negate science, but rather to recast the significance of scientific theory and relativize it somewhat.
By staring at waves, the structures taken for granted in common sense experience all of a sudden appear to be problems. Sense experience is revealed to be based on structures that may have as much to do with the nature of consciousness or culture as the nature of a reality existing independently of our knowledge and experience. This insight has informed several schools of philosophy. Calvino articulates the insight on page 7: "Is this perhaps the real result that Mr. Palomar is about to achieve? To make the waves run in the opposite direction, to overturn time, to perceive the true substance of the world beyond sensory and mental habits?"
But Mr. Palomar is unable to take this insight any further. Perhaps it is because he hoped to perceive the truth he sought, rather than find it in some non-perceptual way. But what other way could there be? At this point in the novel, sense perception remains the paradigm of unproblematical, certain knowledge for Mr. Palomar: thoughts can only direct more efforts at "directly perceiving". And these efforts come to no avail. Perception is found to be un-graspably complex to Mr. Palomar and yet no other type of experience is revealed to promise a more certain type of knowledge.
For our purposes, then, is Mr. Palomar limited in the kinds of data he can collect and limited in the forms of analysis in which to understand the data? Does too much of the subjective and normative lies in the background? Is he, perhaps like you, yet not ready to deal with the data fully?
Comments are discussion are welcome
Observing a wave (1.1.1)
In this first chapter, Calvino explores sense perception of the physical world, with social and cultural factors backgrounded as much as possible. All we basically have in this chapter is Mr. Palomar and "waves." You neatly noticed that we cannot escape culture, we can only background it. It still operates by supplying categories, words, and analogies for sense perception.
Although Calvino could have chosen any physical object or phenomenon to investigate for the purposes of analyzing sense perception, he picked a rather difficult one: waves forming near an ocean shore and moving to break on a beach. Why start his book on experience here?
One possible reason is a belief, on the part of Calvino, that an examination of wave perception will illuminate common structures of all sense perception, including and more significantly the taken-for-granted features of the more common. By focusing on the most purely visual entry in the entire book, Calvino helps call attention to horizon of factors that constitute the objective, visual world. Or as we might understand it, “making the invisible visible." The difficulties involved in examining perception of waves are simply easier to see than these same difficulties present when examining a bowl, pencil, rock and other physical objects that display consistent shape. Here, then, he allows
the reader to explore the phenomenological narrative of experience, that of Mr. Palomar.
From this perspective, the ocean symbolizes how reality outside of human knowledge and experience is pressed into various shapes and patterns by the act of perception. When we look, meaning comes through the schema that orders experience in our minds. The ocean, for Mr. Palomar, is like Kant’s notion of the “thing in-itself”; something we do not have direct access to because it is already interpreted by the time we are conscious of it. Structures of perception filter experience through language, culture, socio-economic and educational background - structures located within the apparatus of perceiving rather than in the objects themselves. Here again, we hear echoes of van Manen, reminding of the responsibility to "make thoughtful sense of the meaning the child's experience has for the child as well as for the adult."
Waves may be taken to represent any perceptual object that arises from the interaction of our perceptual apparatus with the world around us. The ways in which we perceive waves reveal processes and structures involved in all object perception. Like Tiffany thinking like her daughter, how we see functions from what we know.
What are some of the things that emerge from Mr. Palomar's efforts that might throw light upon all sense perception?
Notice that Mr. Palomar, like all of us, is capable of perceiving waves unproblematically. It is only when he tries consciously to perceive a wave, as some sort of well defined object, that questions and problems arise. It is only when he restricts his holistic modes of experience in order to really focus on just his visual perceptions that difficulties come up. The whole thrust of phenomenological philosophy made use of this sort of thing: common and unproblematical perceptions do become problematical and interesting when one subjects the experience of perception to careful scrutiny. This happens whether one investigates how we perceive grass, stones, trees, ideas, emotions, memories, music, waves ...., anything and everything!
Waves, like all sense objects, are "seen" as foregrounds within a horizon of contrasts: other waves, the shore, the sky. All objects of perception appear against a background of apperception. Apperception means, ap-perception or "perceived-with". The apperceptual background is necessarily perceived with the perceptual foreground because the contrast between foreground and background is necessary to give form. Waves are more difficult to see as discrete objects partly because their backgrounds often shift to disrupt the foreground over time.
The holistic dimension to sense perceptions is not directly perceived but must be arrived at through a reflection. Or, as van Manen writes, “And yet it only through the quest of fundamental reflection that we can become more fully who we are ...” Analysis disrupts the taken-for-granted; per William James, "with critical philosophy, havoc is made of everything."
This line bears more general philosophical lesson to be learned from Mr. Palomar's study of waves on page 6: "If it were not for his impatience to reach a complete, definitive conclusion of his visual operation, looking at waves would be a very restful exercise for him and could save him from neurasthenia, heart attack, and gastric ulcer. And it could perhaps be the key to mastering the world's complexity by reducing it to its simplest mechanism."
Science has basically been an effort to reduce the universe to its simplest mechanisms. It has been an effort to do so that begins with sense experiences. It must take certain types of sense experience to be unproblematical. Waves would not be chosen as a beginning place for the assumptions made by most scientists regarding unproblematical sense experience. But the exercise of examining waves could be used by a phenomenologist or by a postmodern philosopher to cast doubt on all sense experience and thus put the project of science into question. The point is not to negate science, but rather to recast the significance of scientific theory and relativize it somewhat.
By staring at waves, the structures taken for granted in common sense experience all of a sudden appear to be problems. Sense experience is revealed to be based on structures that may have as much to do with the nature of consciousness or culture as the nature of a reality existing independently of our knowledge and experience. This insight has informed several schools of philosophy. Calvino articulates the insight on page 7: "Is this perhaps the real result that Mr. Palomar is about to achieve? To make the waves run in the opposite direction, to overturn time, to perceive the true substance of the world beyond sensory and mental habits?"
But Mr. Palomar is unable to take this insight any further. Perhaps it is because he hoped to perceive the truth he sought, rather than find it in some non-perceptual way. But what other way could there be? At this point in the novel, sense perception remains the paradigm of unproblematical, certain knowledge for Mr. Palomar: thoughts can only direct more efforts at "directly perceiving". And these efforts come to no avail. Perception is found to be un-graspably complex to Mr. Palomar and yet no other type of experience is revealed to promise a more certain type of knowledge.
For our purposes, then, is Mr. Palomar limited in the kinds of data he can collect and limited in the forms of analysis in which to understand the data? Does too much of the subjective and normative lies in the background? Is he, perhaps like you, yet not ready to deal with the data fully?
Comments are discussion are welcome
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Value-Added; a start
Teachers,
I have rounded up a few articles that inform you about 'value-added' systems of evaluation. One point to clarify, though. I was slightly off in my general description of the process (last night in class), to save time. Students' scores compared to averaged students' scores is not the metric; changes in students' test scores are compared to average changes in students' test scores. So, the rate and direction of change is compared to a mean rate of change.
Sorry to muddy an already murky concept. As you read, feel free to email questions (or submit them to Ask Us Anything). Thanks.
***************************************************
Study backs value-added measures (LA Times, with analysis by NEPR, a 'think tank')
Study analyzes efficacy of value-added (Brookings, another 'think tank')
Study looks at effect of 'successful' teachers on students (NYTimes, with analysis by independent researcher)
I have rounded up a few articles that inform you about 'value-added' systems of evaluation. One point to clarify, though. I was slightly off in my general description of the process (last night in class), to save time. Students' scores compared to averaged students' scores is not the metric; changes in students' test scores are compared to average changes in students' test scores. So, the rate and direction of change is compared to a mean rate of change.
Sorry to muddy an already murky concept. As you read, feel free to email questions (or submit them to Ask Us Anything). Thanks.
***************************************************
Study backs value-added measures (LA Times, with analysis by NEPR, a 'think tank')
Study analyzes efficacy of value-added (Brookings, another 'think tank')
Study looks at effect of 'successful' teachers on students (NYTimes, with analysis by independent researcher)
Monday, November 19, 2012
Class notes, Monday, N19
Teachers,
First, a few research items:
First, a few research items:
- An example of "post-hoc storytelling" (i.e. confirmation bias?) from Neuroskeptic
- Here is a particularly insightful look at how statistics can be gamed.
- Here is a more subtle approach.
Author Italo Calvino presents Mr. Palomar's experiences as a combination of three dimensions
- 1 - the visual or the objective world that multiple people have access to at the same time
- 2 - the cultural or the normative/evaluative world that structures conscious awareness
- 3 - the philosophical or subjective world in which only each person has access
Here is an example. Kelsie walks into room 101 before class begins. She is freezing cold. Andrew, who is already in the room, wears a jacket. Kelsie asks if she can "turn the air down." Before Andrew replies, what does he know about,
- 1 - is Kelsie speaking to him? what happens if the air is turned "down"? is it physically possible for Kelsie to "turn the air down"? and other issues that relate to the objective world of which both Kelsie and Andrew participate; are they talking about the same thing?
- 2 - is it allowed by the GSE for a candidate to "turn the air down"? does one candidate need consult with another before taking actions on the room conditions? what norms guide Andrew's actions toward another candidate or a woman? and other issues related to the normative world that underlies the way Andrew and Kelsie experiences the world of others
- 3 - what does it mean to Andrew and to Kelsie "to turn the air down"? Is this a question of temperature? one of the white noise of the air conditioner? is Kelsie sincere and/or serious in her request? is Kelsie asking Andrew for permission? does Andrew respond to Kelsie in ways shaped by prior experience between them? and other issues that relate to their subjective worlds, or what Kelsie experiences but Andrew does not (and vice versa)
A simple question between two people has a cascade of possible meaning. The question is simple only if all participants agree on the conditions which make the question simple. These are the validity claims in an argument, statement or question. Critical ethnography, of the kind you will partake in your research and of which Mr. Palomar undergoes, examines these claims. It starts with the recognition that communication is a process of negotiated meaning. To reach understanding, participants - Andrew and Kelsie in the above example - must agree to all the claims made by a statement by constructing a world of shared meaning, before action is possible. Otherwise, cognitive errors, faulty assumptions, misread intentions and other forms of miscommunication increase the risk of misunderstanding.
Think now of the possible meanings pregnant in at that moment. One perspective could be that Andrew, having spent the day in a room sweltering at 80 degrees, is delighted about to be in such a cool place. His students were exceptionally loud this day, and the speaker system broke its volume control so every loudspeaker message came in at 11. Andrew is delighted to have the consistent low drone of the air conditioner drown out peaks of sound around him. His subjective experience varies widely from Kelsie's. The simple question sits on the nexus of a horizon of possible meanings. Understanding the explicit meanings, by examining the three dimensions of validity claims present in the question, takes effort.
Think now of a teacher and student. Every statement given or question asked by the teacher and student has conditions that make it true. These relate to the objective or visual conditions of the statement (what exactly is being stated or asked?), the subjective or philosophical conditions of each participant (what does each think and feel about the statement or question? what might the other think or feel about the statement or question? how sincere is each party?) and the normative or cultural conditions of each conditions (what background information or culturally relevant meanings determine how each participant makes sense of the statement or question). In order to restore shared meanings, teacher and student must position-take with the other - try to understand how the other comes at the statement or question.
Here we can recall van Manen's claim about the "asymmetry" in a pedagogic relationship, and a heavy dose of your learnings from Equity:
- Should a teacher assume that all students share all the conditions inherent in the validity claims of her experiences?
- Should a teacher demand that all students learn to accept the conditions underlying her validity claims?
- Regarding the meaning of a situation, what does it mean for the teacher to have a larger responsibility in the relationship?
Mr. Palomar gives us an example of a perhaps more foundational question: what does it require for a teacher research to examine the meaning questions of her practice?
Thanks
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