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David Wetzel

Understanding Scientific Inquiry: Inquiry Involves the Use of Critical Thinking to Unde... - 7 views

www.suite101.com/...ific-inquiry-what-is-it-a46356

scientific inquiry understanding science critical thinking higher order skills teaching education

shared by David Wetzel on 15 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • David Wetzel on 15 Oct 10
     
    Scientific inquiry causes students to use higher order thinking skills and learn science from a minds-on approach. Inquiry's foundation originates with John Dewey. In Dewey's book Democracy in Education (1916), he indicates that education begins with the curiosity of learners. Student curiosity and involvement in scientific inquiry moves them beyond passive learning to higher order thinking.
David Wetzel

Understanding Scientific Inquiry: Inquiry Involves the Use of Critical Thinking to Unde... - 9 views

scientificresearchmethods.suite101.com/...scientific_inquiry_what_is_it

scientific inquiry critical thinking science investigations experimental design teaching home school strategies

shared by David Wetzel on 20 May 10 - Cached
  • David Wetzel on 20 May 10
     
    Scientific inquiry causes students to use higher order thinking skills and learn science from a minds-on approach. Inquiry's foundation originates with John Dewey. In Dewey's book Democracy in Education (1916), he indicates that education begins with the curiosity of learners.
Ed Webb

The academy's neoliberal response to COVID-19: Why faculty should be wary and... - 1 views

academicmatters.ca/eoliberal-response-to-covid-19

Canada education online neoliberalism capitalism opinion analysis pandemics

shared by Ed Webb on 29 May 20 - No Cached
  • In the neoliberal economy, workers are seen as commodities and are expected to be trained and “work-ready” before they are hired. The cost and responsibility for job-training fall predominantly on individual workers rather than on employers. This is evident in the expectation that work experience should be a condition of hiring. This is true of the academic hiring process, which no longer involves hiring those who show promise in their field and can be apprenticed on the tenure track, but rather those with the means, privilege, and grit to assemble a tenurable CV on their own dime and arrive to the tenure track work-ready.
  • The assumption that faculty are pre-trained, or able to train themselves without additional time and support, underpins university directives that faculty move classes online without investing in training to support faculty in this shift. For context, at the University of Waterloo, the normal supports for developing an online course include one to two course releases, 12-18 months of preparation time, and the help of three staff members—one of whom is an online learning consultant, and each of whom supports only about two other courses. Instead, at universities across Canada, the move online under COVID-19 is not called “online teaching” but “remote teaching”, which universities seem to think absolves them of the responsibility to give faculty sufficient technological training, pedagogical consultation, and preparation time.
  • faculty are encouraged to strip away the transformative pedagogical work that has long been part of their profession and to merely administer a course or deliver course material
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • remote teaching directives are rooted in the assumption that faculty are equally positioned to carry them out
  • The dual delivery model—in which some students in a course come to class and others work remotely using pre-recorded or other asynchronous course material—is already part of a number of university plans for the fall, even though it requires vastly more work than either in-person or remote courses alone. The failure to accommodate faculty who are not well positioned to transform their courses from in-person to remote teaching—or some combination of the two— will actively exacerbate existing inequalities, marking a step backward for equity.
  • Neoliberal democracy is characterized by competitive individualism and centres on the individual advocacy of ostensibly equal citizens through their vote with no common social or political goals. By extension, group identity and collective advocacy are delegitimized as undemocratic attempts to gain more of a say than those involved would otherwise have as individuals.
  • Portraying people as atomized individuals allows social problems to be framed as individual failures
  • faculty are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as competitors who must maintain a constant level of productivity and act as entrepreneurs to sell ideas to potential investors in the form of external funding agencies or private commercial interests. Rather than freedom of enquiry, faculty research is increasingly monitored through performance metrics. Academic governance is being replaced by corporate governance models while faculty and faculty associations are no longer being respected for the integral role they play in the governance process, but are instead considered to be a stakeholder akin to alumni associations or capital investors.
  • treats structural and pedagogical barriers as minor individual technical or administrative problems that the instructor can overcome simply by watching more Zoom webinars and practising better self-care.
  • In neoliberal thought, education is merely pursued by individuals who want to invest in skills and credentials that will increase their value in the labour market.
  • A guiding principle of neoliberal thought is that citizens should interact as formal equals, without regard for the substantive inequalities between us. This formal equality makes it difficult to articulate needs that arise from historical injustices, for instance, as marginalized groups are seen merely as stakeholders with views equally valuable to those of other stakeholders. In the neoliberal university, this notion of formal equality can be seen, among other things, in the use of standards and assessments, such as teaching evaluations, that have been shown to be biased against instructors from marginalized groups, and in the disproportionate amount of care and service work that falls to these faculty members.
  • Instead of discussing better Zoom learning techniques, we should collectively ask what teaching in the COVID-19 era would look like if universities valued education and research as essential public goods.
  • while there are still some advocates for the democratic potential of online teaching, there are strong criticisms that pedagogies rooted in well-established understandings of education as a collective, immersive, and empowering experience, through which students learn how to deliberate, collaborate, and interrogate established norms, cannot simply be transferred online
  • Humans learn through narrative, context, empathy, debate, and shared experiences. We are able to open ourselves up enough to ask difficult questions and allow ourselves to be challenged only when we are able to see the humanity in others and when our own humanity is recognized by others. This kind of active learning (as opposed to the passive reception of information) requires the trust, collectivity, and understanding of divergent experiences built through regular synchronous meetings in a shared physical space. This is hindered when classroom interaction is mediated through disembodied video images and temporally delayed chat functions.
  • When teaching is reduced to content delivery, faculty become interchangeable, which raises additional questions about academic freedom. Suggestions have already been made that the workload problem brought on by remote teaching would be mitigated if faculty simply taught existing online courses designed by others. It does not take complex modelling to imagine a new normal in which an undergraduate degree consists solely of downloading and memorizing cookie-cutter course material uploaded by people with no expertise in the area who are administering ten other courses simultaneously. 
  • when teaching is reduced to content delivery, intellectual property takes on additional importance. It is illegal to record and distribute lectures or other course material without the instructor’s permission, but universities seem reluctant to confirm that they will not have the right to use the content faculty post online. For instance, if a contract faculty member spends countless hours designing a remote course for the summer semester and then is laid off in the fall, can the university still use their recorded lectures and other material in the fall? Can the university use this recorded lecture material to continue teaching these courses if faculty are on strike (as happened in the UK in 2018)? What precedents are being set? 
  • Students’ exposure to a range of rigorous thought is also endangered, since it is much easier for students to record and distribute course content when faculty post it online. Some websites are already using the move to remote teaching as an opportunity to urge students to call out and shame faculty they deem to be “liberal” or “left” by reposting their course material. To avoid this, faculty are likely to self-censor, choosing material they feel is safer. Course material will become more generic, which will diminish the quality of students’ education.
  • In neoliberal thought, the public sphere is severely diminished, and the role of the university in the public sphere—and as a public sphere unto itself—is treated as unnecessary. The principle that enquiry and debate are public goods in and of themselves, regardless of their outcome or impact, is devalued, as is the notion that a society’s self-knowledge and self-criticism are crucial to democracy, societal improvement, and the pursuit of the good life. Expert opinion is devalued, and research is desirable only when it translates into gains for the private sector, essentially treating universities as vehicles to channel public funding into private research and development. 
  • The free and broad pursuit—and critique—of knowledge is arguably even more important in times of crisis and rapid social change.
  • Policies that advance neoliberal ideals have long been justified—and opposition to them discredited—using Margaret Thatcher’s famous line that “there is no alternative.” This notion is reproduced in universities framing their responses to COVID-19 as a fait accompli—the inevitable result of unfortunate circumstances. Yet the neoliberal assumptions that underpin these responses illustrate that choices are being made and force us to ask whether the emergency we face necessitates this exact response.
  • The notion that faculty can simply move their courses online—or teach them simultaneously online and in person—is rooted in the assumption that educating involves merely delivering information to students, which can be done just as easily online as it can be in person. There are many well-developed online courses, yet all but the most ardent enthusiasts concede that the format works better for some subjects and some students
  • Emergencies matter. Far from occasions that justify suspending our principles, the way that we handle the extra-ordinary, the unexpected, sends a message about what we truly value. While COVID-19 may seem exceptional, university responses to this crisis are hardly a departure from the neoliberal norm, and university administrations are already making plans to extend online teaching after it dissipates. We must be careful not to send the message that the neoliberal university and the worldview that underpins it are acceptable.
Ed Webb

Liberal Education after the Pandemic | AAUP - 1 views

www.aaup.org/...beral-education-after-pandemic

LiberalArts liberal_arts education future US USA pandemics economy sustainability science climate opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Sep 20 - Cached
  • The current massive and unanticipated experiment in online education could transform higher education as we know it. We should begin these difficult conversations about the future of the liberal arts now, in cyberspace, before the new normal takes shape—whenever that may be. Even if we feel trapped in our own homes and beset with anxiety and cabin fever, we also have an opportunity to reconsider the aims of higher education not in the abstract but in this concrete historical moment, with attention to specific institutional needs, public policy proposals, ideological pressures, and the overarching economic crisis.
  • A genuine commitment to ethical, historically aware, egalitarian, or democratic principles can land an individual in a world of trouble. I am thinking, for example, of the basic scientific literacy, historical awareness, and ethical commitment that equip an individual citizen to recognize the expertise of infectious disease specialists and reject the common sense of neighbors or the priorities and demands of an employer—or to spot the bogus claims, fundamental incompetence, or ethical depravity of some elected leaders. Such scientific literacy and basic familiarity with statistical analysis allow nonexperts to understand the arguments of climatologists and reject the sophistry of coworkers or talk show hosts or governors who point out, for example, that “the climate has always been changing.”
  • The reason that individual institutions cannot pitch such potential outcomes under ordinary circumstances is that these intellectual faculties serve the public good but do not necessarily advance the economic interests or career objectives of individual prospective or current students, especially those incurring significant debt. Being a whistleblower, for example, is generally a costly, painful career move—but the public needs to know nonetheless if the US military is shooting civilians in the streets of Baghdad; or the pharmaceutical industry is engineering a profitable opioid epidemic; or the health insurance industry is denying legitimate claims.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • just as the current crisis represents an opportunity for the people who have been working hard to privatize everything imaginable, dismantle public education, sink net neutrality, and align higher education with the demands of prospective employers and industry moguls (think here of the interventions of the Koch brothers in higher education, for example), it also represents an opportunity to push for the basic conditions under which a liberal education might properly serve its public functions. We should use these months to advocate for the kinds of public policies, such as tuition-free higher education, that recognize liberal education as a common good. We must articulate the reasons why a liberal education is in fact a common good and why a liberal education is disfigured if it is made to promote the demands of prospective employers.
  • We need a society capable of devising new and more humane social contracts, new political economies, new food and energy grids, and sustainable use of resources—whether or not these projects produce financial dividends for individual graduates or for their employers. An accessible, publicly funded liberal education decoupled from the demands of industry and prospective employers is the best way to prepare people to do these things.
  • we should use these months of confinement to strategize about a long-term case for liberal education and for public investment in an educated citizenry. Now is the time to invest some of our intellectual capital in education advocacy that ultimately makes a difference not only in the lives of students but also for the collective well-being of our nation and the world
Adrienne Michetti

ICT in Education Assessments are Biased and Inaccurate « Educational Technolo... - 7 views

edutechdebate.org/...ents-are-biased-and-inaccurate

shared by Adrienne Michetti on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • One of the conclusions was that indeed, large reforms (e.g., “Het nieuwe leren”, or the new learning) were imposed without scientific support. Another that political prejudices, not any kind of data, were the main motivating factor in the reforms.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 25 Feb 10
       
      Sadly, I think this is true of most educational reforms - ICT or not.
  • The alternative, assessing educational reforms well before introduction, is a form of social engineering. Social engineering seems to always be more difficult than you think. And I think history has shown that education is no exception in this respect.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 25 Feb 10
       
      an interesting argument, though I am not sure I agree.
  • Scientific “facts” are never appreciated unless they completely align with the preconceptions of the “stake-holders” (minus the children).
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 25 Feb 10
       
      what kind of "scientific facts" would guide ICT reform, though? what about research? studies? user testing?
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • : Does this ICT4E solution improve scores on existing tests
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 25 Feb 10
       
      whose tests? and what is being tested? and why do tests have to be the only metric of success?
  • The curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature, seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 25 Feb 10
       
      I would probably argue that having tests which match the curriculum is a GOOD thing. However, in this case it seems that the problem is the curriculum. So reform does not always begin with the assessment, or with the ICT.
  • If we want to test whether changes in education really improve learning, we do have other tools. They are called aptitude tests.
David Hilton

Constructivism - 0 views

carbon.cudenver.edu/...constructivism.html

constructivism education theory pedagogy teaching

shared by David Hilton on 25 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Heath Sawyer on 25 Mar 09
     
    Links, research and readings on constructivism
  • ...1 more comment...
  • David Hilton on 04 May 09
     
    Constructivist theories grew out of the work of a couple of Russians around the time of the Russian Revolution. It is radical subjectivism dressed up as science, and has no scientific credibility whatsoever. It is used by radical educators to push their barrow that nothing the teacher knows is worth the student learning and that all knowledge is innate. It's bullsh*t. Theories like this rot are part of the reason that the bottom has dropped out of Western education and we have a generation who can't write. This should be resisted by any educator with an interest in educational excellence.
  • Ken Stanton on 04 May 09
     
    David, back up your argument. If you think this is junk science, then be a real scientist and substantiate your claim. I'm a very objective thinker and will listen and gladly debate this with you, but having studied this and used it, I'm skeptical of your dissent. It is the only thing that has gotten me through our failed education system, not the reason the system has failed (unless your argument is that our system is failing due to lack of use of constructivist approaches).
  • David Hilton on 13 Jun 09
     
    Constructivism is a prime example of the dangers of deductive reasoning. Instead of starting with evidence from observed reality which the scientific method dictates (inductive reasoning) constructivism starts with theories and then makes the evidence fit the theory or else dismisses it and rationalises it away. It's the same type of thinking that has gotten all ideologues into trouble throughout history, whether it's the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazis, the hippies or the recent Wall Street bankers who drove our economy off a cliff. Any true system of thought must start with the real world as its beginning, or else it's just a bunch of people making stuff up and then defending it despite all evidence to the contrary until the weight of truth destroys them and usually the institutions they've taken over.
Vicki Davis

Drawing to Learn | Learning Sciences Research Institute - 1 views

www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/...drawingtolearn

education sketchnoting sketchnotes learning all_teachers bestpractices edu_news edu_trends

shared by Vicki Davis on 29 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 29 Sep 15
     
    "Ainsworth, Prain and Tyler  (2011) in a paper in Science argue that  drawing  can play a number of  important roles in learning:, namely: Drawing to enhance engagement - surveys have shown than when students draw to explain they are more motivated to learn compared to traditional teaching of science. Drawing to learn to represent in science - the process of producing visual representations  helps learners understand how scientific representations work. Drawing to reason in science - student learn to reason like scientists as they select specific features to focus on in their drawings, aligning it with observation, measurement and/or emerging ideas Drawing as a learning strategy - if learners read a text and then draw it, the process of making their understanding visible and explicit helps them to overcome limitations in presented material, organise and integrate their knowledge and ultimately can be transformative. Drawing to communicate - discussing their drawings with their students provides teachers with windows into students' thinking as well being a way that the peers can share knowledge, discovery and understanding."
David Wetzel

Web Based Science Inquiry Learning Centers: Combining Online Resources with Classroom S... - 11 views

teachingtechnology.suite101.com/...webbased_science_inquiry

online learning web 2 0 tools based inquiry science centers

shared by David Wetzel on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • David Wetzel on 18 Mar 10
     
    For a web-based learning to be truly effective it must be interactive. This means that it is not just a reformatted canned lesson of printed worksheets placed on the web. The web-based activity is inquiry-based and incorporates the full features available on the web - interactivity between computer and student. The learning activity must engage student critical thinking skills by using the scientific inquiry process.
Ed Webb

Hamlet and the Power of Beliefs to Shape Reality | Literally Psyched, Scientific Americ... - 9 views

blogs.scientificamerican.com/...er-of-beliefs-to-shape-reality

learning neuroscience psychology belief

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • the more someone believes in improvement, the larger the amplitude of a brain signal that reflects a conscious allocation of attention to mistakes. And the larger that neural signal, the better subsequent performance. That mediation suggests that individuals with an incremental theory of intelligence may actually have better self-monitoring and control systems on a very basic neural level: their brains are better at monitoring their own, self-generated errors and at adjusting their behavior accordingly. It’s a story of improved on-line error awareness—of noticing mistakes as they happen, and correcting for them immediately.
  • If we think of ourselves as able to learn, learn we will—and if we think we are doomed to fail, we doom ourselves to do precisely that, not just behaviorally, but at the most fundamental level of the neuron.
Felix Gryffeth

Climate Change Denial: The danger of false balance in journalism - 2 views

www.usatoday.com/...12402887

climate change journalism

shared by Felix Gryffeth on 15 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • "undue attention to marginal opinion"
  • editorial decisions should be guided by where the scientific consensus might be found on any given topic
  • doesn't mean you should give equal space or airtime to established truth on the one hand and reality-challenged people who don't like it on the other.
  • Felix Gryffeth on 15 Aug 14
     
    To try to be fair, many journalists may print what someone says, print what the other side says and call it a day. The trouble is, there isn't always equal merit on both sides. Think climate change.
  • Felix Gryffeth on 15 Aug 14
     
    To try to be fair, many journalists may print what someone says, print what the other side says and call it a day. The trouble is, there isn't always equal merit on both sides. Think climate change.
David Wetzel

Modeling the Composition of Earth's Atmosphere: The Layer of Gases Surrounding Planet E... - 6 views

www.suite101.com/...n-of-earths-atmosphere-a122097

critical thinking science inquiry higher order skills teaching composition modeling the of problem based learning investigating scientific project

shared by David Wetzel on 10 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • David Wetzel on 10 Nov 10
     
    This is a hands-on, minds-on approach to provide students with a concrete model of the earth's atmosphere to visualize the gases which comprise the air they breath.
David Hilton

AFT - Publications - American Educator - Spring 2006 - How Knowledge Helps - 0 views

www.aft.org/...willingham.htm

shared by David Hilton on 27 Sep 09 - Cached
  • The more you know, the easier it will be for you to learn new things.
    • David Hilton
      David Hilton on 27 Sep 09
       
      Recent neurological and psychological research (using scientific methodolgy as a basis, not theories e.g. Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, Bloom's Taxonomy, etc) is indicating that the constructivist models of learning, where 'process' is valued far more than 'content', are incorrect. Knowledge and thinking are interdependent and to think well, students must have knowledge.
David Wetzel

Investigating the Impact of Artificial Reefs: Problem-Based Learning Study of Human Inf... - 4 views

www.suite101.com/...ns-of-artificial-reefs-a102135

problem based learning project impact investigating science critical thinking higher order skills teaching scientific inquiry

shared by David Wetzel on 15 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • David Wetzel on 15 Oct 10
     
    Students make connections with many science concepts and communicate their recommendations to officials and organizations regarding the future of artificial reefs.
David Wetzel

Science Experiments with Rocks that Absorb Water: An Investigation into the Porosity an... - 5 views

curriculalessons.suite101.com/...find_out_if_rocks_absorb_water

porosity permeability rocks earth science scientific inquiry critical thinking investigations experimental teaching strategies experiments

shared by David Wetzel on 21 May 10 - Cached
  • David Wetzel on 21 May 10
     
    Students conduct an experiment to determine the ability of rocks to absorb and retain water, making connections with the concepts of porosity and permeability in rocks.
David Wetzel

Modeling the Composition of Earth's Atmosphere: The Layer of Gases Surrounding Planet E... - 8 views

curriculalessons.suite101.com/...mposition_of_earths_atmosphere

earth science atmosphere scientific inquiry critical thinking investigations experimental design teaching strategies

shared by David Wetzel on 21 May 10 - Cached
  • David Wetzel on 21 May 10
     
    This is a hands-on, minds-on approach to providing students with a concrete model of the earth's atmosphere to visualize the gases that comprise the atmosphere.
David Warlick

Commentary - 10 views

blackboard.usi.edu/...learningUnitItem.jsp

shared by David Warlick on 03 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • it is a powerful teaching and learning methodology.
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 03 Jan 11
       
      A link to an interview with a teacher who has used service learning would be good here.
  • thoughtfully organized service experiences
  • structured time to reflect
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • clear connections to academic curriculum
  • a great deal of time and learning takes place before the service even happens
  • National Youth Leadership Council
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 03 Jan 11
       
      It can be found here -- http://www.nylc.org/
  • Essential Elements of Service Learning
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 03 Jan 11
  • Practitioners that utilize service-learning understand that the process of identifying community needs, giving students an active role in designing, implementing, and evaluating the project and encouraging students to reflect on their learning allows young people to develop new understandings and applications beyond what they would gain from typical classroom instruction.
  • Cleaning up a river is service.Sitting in a science classroom, looking at water samples under a microscope is learning.Students taking samples from local water sources, analyzing the samples, documenting the results and presenting scientific findings to a local pollution control agency is service-learning.
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 03 Jan 11
       
      This is important and it should be formatted appropriately...
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 03 Jan 11
       
      It might be interesting to stop here, and as reader to write down, from this brief explanation, what they think are the essential elements of "service-learning."
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