-----Original Message-----
From: Professional & Organization Development Network in Higher
Education [mailto:POD@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ed Nuhfer
Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2005 1:29 PM
To: POD@listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [POD] Problem Based Learning (was Teaching Methods, Fads,
Time Spent on Mechanics, Etc.)
> Also agreed. But I'm wondering what that "mindfulness" consists of.
> I've been disturbed for some time about whether problem solving done
> in consciousness of the fact that it's really about learning has
> different consequences from problem solving done to solve problems
> that need solving. It's about simulations, I guess, as opposed to
> what we might call "authentic engagement." Researchers before Popper
> learned, but I suspect few would have been mindful of the process, and
> even fewer thought it was about learning something transferable
> (though of course one _does_ learn that way).
Thanks Russ--let me try to clear up the "wondering" issue. My
"mindulfness"
comments refer to a metacognitive reflection on the framework of
reasoning that we are employing in the process of the research or
learning that we are doing. I discovered about ten years ago to my
horror that many practicing scientists and engineers are not able to
articulate well what science is and how it works. When such people are
professors, they can teach many facts and have students running all
kinds of instruments gathering measurements and data without the mindful
awareness of "What hypothesis are we really testing?" and "Is this the
appropriate method of science to use in order to test it?" In education,
an example might be, what hypothesis are we testing when we correlate
exam performance of students with student evaluations of the teacher?
People leap to conclude that it's about finding out how valid, useful,
etc. student evaluations are to education. Perhaps this mechanistic
approach only tests the hypothesis "How much are student evaluations
like tests?" Next, although correlation coefficients are the standard
and most often used methods to report relationships between evaluative
ratings and other factors, does the nature of the data make correlation
coefficients the best way to understand or express such a relationship?
Science in general has been taught very mechanically even though the
nature of science is a deep philosophical approach to understanding the
physical world through very specific ways. Two nights ago on Fox News, I
watched Bill O'Reilly unable to understand why science teachers do not
want to teach intelligent design. He called all who opposed this
"fascists." Watching him talk about science was probably an equivalent
level to what I would look like talking about media
broadcasting--clueless. He had no clue that intelligent design weds its
explanation of the physical world by vesting its explanations with the
untestable--it just isn't science. That's why it's unacceptable to
science teachers who understand what science is--it has nothing to do
with fascism, asinine politics, agnosticism, or atheism tendencies of
scientists or science teachers.
In Hake's focus on PBL, he notes we have been doing this in
research--perhaps since the time of Thales. I agree with Hake that the
fact we have been doing research and doing it well does not mean that we
should act pejoratively toward a study of the processes ongoing through
PBL. What I hoped to add is that as we learn what happens in the process
of PBL, we share with our students those insights. In general, teachers
don't do that--just as we have not done well graduating students with
science degrees who really can articulate what science is. Similar
things go on in the area of "critical thinking." If I'm trying to move
students toward higher Perry levels, I find it useful to share with
students what these Perry levels are, and get them to do a bit of
metacognition along with their disciplinary content engagement.
Hope this helps,
Ed
************************************************************************
*
You are subscribed to the POD mailing list. To Unsubscribe, change your
subscription options, or access list archives, visit
http://listserv.nd.edu/archives/pod.html
For information about the POD Network visit http://podnetwork.org
Hosted by the John A. Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning and the
Office of Information Technologies at the University of Notre Dame.
************************************************************************
*
