Ennie, McPeck and a Heat Transfer class...

I strongly believe that rational thinkers exercise their skills in familiar fields of experiences. Definition of rational thinkers, according to Robert Ennis, is when a person exhibit certain proficiencies, tendencies, and good habits. Under proficiencies, Ennis listed observing, inferring, generalizing, conceiving and stating assumptions and alternatives, offering a well-organized or well-formulated line of reasoning, evaluating statement and chains of reasoning, and detecting standard problems.

From what I have been taught thus far, this is a problem solving method for technical engineering class. Initially when I am given a problem, say for example a problem in Heat Transfer, I would first ask series of questions. Questions like, is the system I am solving a compressible or incompressible? Can I apply control volume analysis over the system? If I do, what assumptions am I making? These are questions I would ask and need to know in order to solve the problem or at least make it simple enough to be able to use an equation that I know to solve for it. I think this is a very technical procedure and without knowing these equations or knowledge, once cannot solve it. One can only solve it, when one is familiar with this field. I agree with John McPeck, when he says, “…that all such thinking, beyond the trivial, manifests itself as an application of one or more of the disciplines. Further he says: “There is no such thing as thinking critically in general”. I believe that students must learn the process of what it means to make valid mathematical and scientific assumptions.

It is very interesting that one of the class I took, my Professor insisted that I use following outline when submitting my HW. The outlines were:

1) State what is KNOWN:

2) State what I am trying to FIND:

3) State ASSUMPTIONS:

4) State known PROPERTIES

5) Write your ANALYSIS:

6) Write COMMENTS:

Stronger critical thinker...is that what engineer is all about?

Richard Paul separated critical thinkers to two categories: weak and strong critical thinkers. I think, if I am educating an engineer, I want my student to become a strong critical thinker that is have an ability to “challenge their own assumptions and arguments”. Be able to question their claims, hypothesis, results, methods etc. The reason why I want my student to have this ability is because I believe in “fallible foundationalism”, mentioned in Chapter 6 in Noddings. As stated in Noddings, fallible foundationalism is when the search for absolute certain belief is hopeless, but we use probability theory to argue for a degree of certainty. The more we test and question the claims we developed the “greater is our warrant for asserting it”. This is close to what Dewey, believed that claim is made through verification rather than justification.

My background is in experimental. I had to do many experiments to prove the claim that certain the result correlated with the formula developed by me. I had to make sure that the hypothesis developed could be “defendable” from many experts. I had to take into account many factors and ensure that I hadn’t forgotten anything important by looking at the experiment and results from many perspectives. Further I had to make sure that any assumptions I used were correct to apply. Without many tests and verification, engineering community would be skeptic with my findings. For this, I believe we should strive to teach students to be a strong critical thinker. Be able to know what they did and have confidence in their work.

Guiding questions for Week 4: Dall' Alba

Last week we explored the role of epistemology in thinking about the aims and process of education. This week we're going to read a "contemporary" take on education philosophy that critiques an overemphasis on epistemology (theory of knowledge) and an artificial separation of "mind" from "body".

What is the basis of Dall'Alba's critique on current views of education? (what is her argument?)

What alternative framework does she put forth?

What might it look like to design an education based on this alternative framework?

Some tips on writing

In class, I also shared some ideas on how to improve your writing.  Here are some highlights:

• Avoid the cosmic opener.  If you start off your paper's introduction with some kind of grand statement about the meaning of life, the way humans have always done something since the beginning of time, or similar, leave it until you know what you specifically want to say, and then write it over.  :-)  Some examples of good (albethey not awesome) starting sentences:
• The aftermath of World War II resulted in the government investing vast quantities of public money in the support of a new form of institution: the research university.
• Scholars in the 1960s and 1970s explored the intersection of education "as a practice of freedom" and the structure of classrooms in order to question power relations between instructors and students.
• A formative experience in my educational history was learning philosophy through reading French.
• I first thought about being an engineer after being very successful in an advanced chemistry class in high school.
• Strive to avoid using the passive voice.  One of our tasks as your instructors in this class is to prompt you to structure strong arguments grounded in evidence.  When your evidence largely consists of the words of others, the passive voice allows you to avoid articulating WHO said or did or prompted your point.  
• Some examples of the passive voice:
• Education in US K-12 contexts was designed to help children grow using the liberal arts.
• A study was done that claimed people don't learn through rote repetition, but through constructing their own knowledge frameworks.
• Constructivism is considered a popular cognitive framework.
• Students are taught from textbooks.
• Instead, use the active voice.
• Some educators emerging from the Progressive Era structured learning environments around discovery.
• Rousseau has many ideas about the education of men, but does not speak as much about the education of women.
• Noddings uses the tool of formal logic to illustrate challenges to naturalistic argument.
• Once you have written a complete-ish draft, reoutline your paper.  In other words, take a paragraph you've written and try to summarize its big idea, write it in the margin.  Do you have more than one big idea per paragraph?  You might then want to split them into two paragraphs, where you say your big idea, and then spend the rest of the paragraph supporting it.  Once you've summarized all the paragraphs, look at all your big ideas, and think about whether the flow of those ideas help you make your overall point.  Do you need to reorder paragraphs? Do you need to delete one entirely (or save it to a "cut paragraphs" file in case you want it again later) because it is a distraction?
• Have colleagues read your essays.  Not just the folks in ENE or in class -- have your roomate, your partner, your kids read your essay and give you specific advice.
• Let your ideas stew.  Write something, and leave it aside.  You might mull it over, and want to rewrite bits.  You might return to it with fresh eyes to improve how you have made a point.  So plan in time to be able to leave it aside.
• Writing can be a way to think through ideas.  So as you write, you might change your overall point or story.  So then don't leave the beginning of your essay in the place you started -- we should not need to retrace your journey to follow your argument.  START OVER.  Otherwise we will note you are drifting through your essay.  Try to stay focused over the period of your essay.
• Make use of the Writing Lab, either the online version, or the in-person version.  They are great resources - especially the in-person version.

Let me know if you have questions on these, or add ideas to the comments below!

Key vocabulary to listen for: what is on your ??? list?

In class, Dan noted to me that it would be helpful to have a discussion/definition around some of the terms that get tossed a lot "around here" (and elsewhere in engineering education).  :-)  Some of those terms include:

• scaffolding
• epistemology (as noun, adjective)
• pedagogy (as noun, adjective, verb?)
• 
  

What are other terms you hear tossed around that you really wish someone would define, situate, or outline for you?

It is my first posting in this semester; I finally understood what we should do with our blog, I read other people statements and decided that it is a time for me to present my “reflection thoughts”. First of all, I would like to give a BIG complement to all of our class participants about their postings: GUYS, ALL OF YOU ARE SO SMART!!!!!!! SO MANY INTELEGENT PEOPLE IN ONE CLASSROOM!!!!!!!!

We read already 7 chapters of the Noddings’ book. So many philosophical schools and trends were described. My common impression about these readings (as on physicist said): WE CANNOT IMAGING A FIVE-DIMENSIONAL CUBE BY OUR THREE-DIMENSIONAL BRAIN. All those philosophers and philosophical schools fight with each other in time and space about what is the true, but the consensus on “what is the true” and what is “best” is not made yet and never will be made.

I would like to touch the chapter 6, where Noddings discuses Epistemology and Education. Piaget and Kuhn - are the most familiar to me, because I already overviewed their work in my dissertational literature review. All another names like Dewey, Pestalozzi or Popper are completely new to me.
From what I read about Dewey from this book – I don’t like him, and I don’t like his ideas. But maybe I just do not know enough about his work.

I agreed with Piaget’s approach that it is impossible to know what is “knowledge” without knowing who “knower” is. His theory has had an enormous impact on the educational psychology of the twentieth century. Montfort (2007) said:
"Piaget described learning as a developmental process in which people progress through standard stages of increasing understanding in order to internalize knowledge. Piaget identified six stages of cognitive development that he believed to be universal when learning. Although new information is gained throughout the stages, each stage is defined by a particular perspective and method of obtaining and organizing information. At each stage a person gains a broader, more thorough and more flexible understanding. He theorized that a person’s knowledge is organized into categories. When people encounter new information they must either fit it into an existing category, or change the organization of their categories to fit the new knowledge. Piaget found that people were more likely to change new information to fit existing categories than to change or add categories"(p.3).

As about Kuhn’s book- it had a big impact on philosophy of science in 20th century. To say a true, before I finally understood what he wants to say , I read this book almost three times. For the first time (I read that in English a year ago)- I understood almost nothing, it was like mumbling- jumbling about what is “the true”. For the second time- I found his book in Russian (my native language), but it was even worse. After I read a few book’s reviews on Kuhn theory, I finally understand how important his work was.

In his book, Kuhn argued that science did not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge but underwent periodic revolutions, also called “paradigm shifts”. He identified three main stages, which allowed any scientific revolution to be possible: (1) The period of Normal Science – when every new discovery could be explained by the ruling paradigm; (2) Crisis in science – the appearance of anomalies and inexplicable facts; (3) Science revolution –a creation of new paradigm, or in other words, a macro-conceptual change in the scientific environment.
After a scientific revolution: “Familiar objects are seen in a different light and joined by unfamiliar ones as well. Scientists see the world of their research-engagement differently. They are responding to a different world. What people see depends both on what they look at and on what their previous visual-conceptual experience has taught them to see” (Pajares, F., n.d.). A good illustration of this idea is presented on the Figure 1. Recognizing a duck or rabbit depends on what a person wants to see.





Figure 1. Duck-Rabbit Illusion (Jastrow, 1899)





At the present time this book is considered as one of the classic books about history and evolution of science. Kuhn’s work had an enormous impact on modern philosophy. There was a time when this book was the most cited in scientific literature. For those who would like to read it but have no time Frank Pajares (n.d.) wrote an excellent review where he analyzed chapter by chapter Kuhn’s book.
My impression after reading this book was that the author represents science as a living organism. He explains how science develops and what development stages science has to follow. These development stages of science are related to the development of all human civilization and the history of human society.

I guess it is enough for now, see all of you in class………….



References

Jastrow, J. (1899). The mind’s eye. Popular Science Monthly, 54, 299-312. Retrieved from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duck-Rabbit_illusion.jpg

Kuhn, T.S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago Press, The second edition.

Montfort,D. (2007) An investigation of students’ conceptual understanding in related sophomore to graduate-level engineering and mechanics courses. MS Thesis. Washington State University.

Pajares, F. (n.d.) Outline and Study Guide for “The structure of scientific revolution” Retrieved from: http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Kuhn.html

An possibility of exploring the aim of education

This initially serves as a comment to Julia's post, but I now think it may provok more thinking if I post it here.

Actually, I very much agree Dewey’s opinion that education should open doors or enable our students to develop connections. Then the problem is open doors to where? be connected to what? The answer differs individually. A burglar may think that his education should open a door for him to become a more skillful burglar; A young child who is interested in mathematics would believe that his education should connect him to a world full of mathematics; and a person who pursues monetary wealth believe that his education should connect him to a more wealthy status.
Although Dewey insisted that to ask “growth towards what?” is inconsistent with the concept of growth, actually, from my perspective and most of you may also agree, Dewey believed that growth should towards an ideal democratic society. So if an experience couldn’t lead a person towards a good citizen of a democratic society, then this experience is not educative.

Thus we see that Dewey’s growth actually has a direction. If we do not agree with Dewey’s direction, then we should face the questions: what is the right direction of education? Just as I mentioned, the answer may differ from person to person. Then this may lead to a concept of education that students should be taught individually, according individual interests and characters. This concept is at best impracticable and biased. The reason why we are leading to this situation is that we neglect that each individual might have more than one aims and expectation of their education. If everyone is connected only to one place, we would not have a community or a society. There are multiple connections. So there may not be an ultimate aim of education, rather there might be multiple aims of education. Thus we could explore the possibility of defining the aim of education from both the angle of individual and the angle of the whole society, and they try to find the connections between the two types of aims.

Some chewy questions on Noddings so far...

In Chapter 1 Noddings describes educational philosophies that are still relevant today. What does each have to say about the purpose of education, who is educated (and what they are educated for), how they are educated, and (linking to Chapter 6) what it means to be educated?

How do these philosophies relate to your own engineering education experiences? What does this YouTube video suggest about the purpose or process of education?



In Chapter 6 Noddings describes different ways of knowing (epistemologies).  How do they compare (or what makes them different)?  In what ways are these evident in your synthesis essay (e.g., your theories of knowing engineering)?

Meta note: Noddings on and doing philosophy

Last week I mentioned that, while Noddings is writing about philosophy, she also drops these little clues every so often that the way she is writing about philosophy is itself a philosophical argument.  I'll share the couple of notes I made -- as you discover ones yourselves, feel free to share them in the comments.

p. 21: This comment of Dewey's reveals something of the flavor of criticism philosophers of education sometimes direct at one another's work.  We have seen that Dewey expressed admiration for something in the work of Rousseah, Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel, but he also found difficulties -- recommendations not fully grounded, inconsistencies, and ideas incompatible with Dewey's own underlying beliefs concerning the nature of the child, the meaning of education, the role of teaching, and the nature of lessons.

p. 55
Philosophers often do what we have done together in the last few pages.  Starting with a scheme such as Scheffler's they raise objections or reject certain points.  They may argue for new or revised criteria, predict consequences that the original author failed to foresee, probe for suppressed premises, or reject the entire scheme as wrongheaded.  Often a particular line of argumentation leads quite naturally into another domain for analysis.

What else does Noddings share about the nature of philosophical argumentation?

Growth and Knowledge to more knowledge

I would like to give my thoughts on Dewey’s idea of growth and knowledge, building on some of the area Xin explored earlier.

Dewey seems to state that a piece of information held by an individual is not knowledge unless it is able to develop growth for the benefit of a democratic society. That in order for information to become knowledge it must be able to pass some type of democratic moral filter. It seems that knowledge should be more basic than that. My engineering (black and white hat) wants to come on and say “No.” Knowledge happens if you attain some sort of fact. It does not need to be true or false or “right” or “wrong.” Those are different subjects than knowledge. There should be another category of the knowledge that the philosopher believes is important and needs to be harnessed and passed on.

Now with the reflecting, I find myself asking, what I believe the important knowledge that should be focused on within a society. I am finding that each of the philosophers has a piece of education I believe in, even the ones that contradict. I see children having an inherent goodness that needs to be preserved, as well as needing strong moral codes to create foundation within their early career.

I am creating a Mary Poplins like list of the ideal education system, where a student taught fundamental information, but able to explore topics of their own interests. Where students are pushed to their individual limits, but feel comforted in a surrounding of community. Critical thinking where students area able to question the status quo, but able to work within the current society, since that is where they are at.

As I write this I see there is a lot of parallels with Palmer, and his philosophies on teaching in Paradox.

Mental Naggings...

One of my favorite sentences in Noddings' book thus far is: "Thinking begins with a nagging sense that something is problematic; something is unsettled" (pg. 30). With this sentence in mind, I thought I would share a few of the ideas that are nagging me at the moment - maybe someone can provide some insight that will relieve me of this nagging sensation. Or on the other hand, maybe I can take a cue from Palmer by continuing to live with the tension and not only live, but thrive in it...

One of the critiques of Socrates and Plato is that during their time war and warriors were glorified and that this glorification greatly influenced the lens through which they viewed education. I wonder would a similar critique be given today - or in any time in history, for that matter. Are traces of things our society glorifies evident in our education system (e.g. sports, fame, sensuality)? Or better yet, is it even possible to create an educational system that prepares people to "meet the needs of the state" without incorporating the things that the members of that state "glorify"?

Aristotle was concerned with educating "citizens", but I wondering how this classification would play out in the USA, a place that is oftentimes referred to as a melting pot. People (citizens and non-citizens) of various descents have made the USA their home and have contributed to "meeting the needs of the state". I guess am not sure of Aristotle's definition of a citizen (e.g. if it was limited to those born in a particular place, like Athens, Sparta, etc.) Of course, it's easier now to determine citizenship in the USA (as opposed to two hundred years ago) but, I wonder how Aristotle and his buddies would have determined citizenship during the more formative years of the USA - a land this is mainly made up of immigrants?

Lastly, I would hate to be a teacher at a school where the Rousseau philosophy was king. Could you imagine trying to write a week's worth of lesson plans that has enough structure to get something done but still leaves enough ambiguity for 20+ students to guide their own learning - at any given time? Or better yet, what if there were no lesson plans!?!? The engineer in me would go bananas in such a world of (what sounds like) chaos! :)

I suppose I'll end here for now. Stay tuned for the next edition of Jeremi's mental "nagging."