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Interpretation/Inference
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Topics"Telling Lies to Children"
(Co-author Dana is Kim's 15-old daughter, a veteran of the New York State Earth Science Regents course, now taking integrated biology and chemistry. She is also an avid reader, currently working her way through the 42 Discworld books of Sir Terry Pratchett.)
In The Science of Discworld, Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen make the case that education necessarily involves telling "lies to children." We realize that telling lies to children is a pretty common part of traditional parenting (Santa Claus, stork, etc.), but in school! in the citadel of learning and truth! How can this be? MoreLearning to Learn from Data
Scientists learn from data. Learning to learn from data is obviously an essential aspect of the education of a future scientist.
These days, however, many other kinds of people also learn from data--including business people, investors, education leaders, and people who care about pollution, disease, or the quality of their local schools. My daily newspaper is rich in data-based graphs and maps--and so is the newsletter from my local library. These days, learning to learn from data is a necessary part of everyone's education.
However, learning to learn from data is not a typical part of everyone's education. This post explores what might be required to construct a thorough learning progression for learning from Earth Science data, beginning where a good elementary school leaves off and carrying on through to what an upper level college course or adult job might demand. More
Multiple lines of reasoning in support of one claim
Earth Science, in my experience, tends not to work this way. Instead, many of the most bold and important claims in Earth Science have been built from many different forms of data and observations. More
Astronomers' Tricks with Light
This semesters' version spans four disciplines: Brain & Behavior (Neuroscience), Astronomy, Earth Science, and Biodiversity. The topics are intended to encompass material that most students would not have studied in high school, so that every student finds something interesting and challenging in the course. A side effect of this course design is that no single faculty member knows all or even most of the material. The College has tried hard to establish a supportive community of practice among the nineteen seminar leaders, and sharing ideas across disciplines has been one of the more rewarding aspects of teaching the course.
The metamessage that is supposed to be accumulating across the four topics is "Scientific Habits of Mind," how scientists think and learn. The course materials never use the term "Epistemology," but that is in large part what this course is about--how scientists know what they know. I've been using the Claims/Evidence/Reasoning mantra that I picked up from the IQWST curriculum developers to articulate the elements that students need to incorporate into a scientific explanation. I have been stunned to realize how different is the nature of evidence and reasoning in the four disciplines we are teaching. More
"...Only the Good Ones..."
Speaking of Haiti, I recently went to a fundraiser for victims of the earthquake at my local yoga studio. Because the audience was so miscellaneous, the teacher called the poses by user-friendly American nicknames rather than by the arcane Sanskrit names. And she told stories.
One of her stories, accompanying the "apple-picking pose," struck me as a parable, with a message for all educators.
paraphrased from Charlene Brandin, Birchwood Center, 23jan10
The messages I heard for educators, including myself:
- Kids, of whatever age, may not hear instructions the way you intended--and their interpretation isn't necessarily wrong.
- "Good" is a complicated construct.
- Kids can tell the difference between authentic assessment and assessment that only grazes the surface.
- Authentic assessment is likely to change that which is being assessed.
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