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[sockgumbee]

Daniel Von Flanagan,

I've mentioned Eric Jolly twice. That's hardly repeatedly.

You say you already know what my position is in your second paragraph.
So why are you asking my position later with your list of possible teaching scenarios? Oh, I get it--you can only think of 5 so that's all there are in the world of possibilities. Anything else is not "actual science" but some ethnocentric pseudoscience. Excuse me while I restudy the quipu/khipu. Cuz, if you've got it all figured out, I am just a hindrance.

I find it hard to take your interest in my position seriously when I find other threads where you write my supposedly [erroneous] position about some issue to belittle me.

You can't have it both ways, either you are interested and respectful or you aren't. Either you wait to find out what my position is or you just go ahead and decide.

I'm fine either way. Your opinion or actions do not change the validity or efficacy of what I and others are doing or advocate.

[sciencephd]

Actually, a bunch of people on this thread have been waiting to find out what your position is.

It would be alot easier if you clearly articulated it.  Then we wouldn't have to guess and fill in the blanks.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

So why are you asking my position later with your list of possible teaching scenarios? Oh, I get it--you can only think of 5 so that's all there are in the world of possibilities. Anything else is not "actual science" but some ethnocentric pseudoscience. Excuse me while I restudy the quipu/khipu. Cuz, if you've got it all figured out, I am just a hindrance.

I quite clearly asked for an alternative to my 5 if you had one; they just represent what I was able to come up with at one sitting,and also reflect the kind of interpretation I can wrap my limited little mind around.

I'm actually quite open to alternatives to traditional science, as long as they meet some minimal criteria for what it means to be "science", for example they come with verifiable ways to reliably predict outcomes of as-yet-unperformed experiments. - DvF

[bewildered]

I've mentioned Eric Jolly twice. That's hardly repeatedly.

Well, that depends.  Is there a consensus on how many times something has to be mentioned before it is considered to have been "repeated"? 

Once we figure out which mention qualifies as the "repeat" it's only a question of converting the word to the adverb form required by the sentence.

[t_folk]

So why are you asking my position later with your list of possible teaching scenarios? Oh, I get it--you can only think of 5 so that's all there are in the world of possibilities. Anything else is not "actual science" but some ethnocentric pseudoscience. Excuse me while I restudy the quipu/khipu. Cuz, if you've got it all figured out, I am just a hindrance.

I quite clearly asked for an alternative to my 5 if you had one; they just represent what I was able to come up with at one sitting,and also reflect the kind of interpretation I can wrap my limited little mind around.

I'm actually quite open to alternatives to traditional science, as long as they meet some minimal criteria for what it means to be "science", for example they come with verifiable ways to reliably predict outcomes of as-yet-unperformed experiments. - DvF

You're like that blonde-headed guy in Karate Kid - you know, the bad dude. And you have a whole group of forum toadies - like those other bad dudes that used to follow that blonde guy around ... dude ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkxFz1k4Ggg

[ajarn]

Why is it almost impossible to buy cosmetics in Asia that do not contain skin whitener?

Not that I buy cosmetics, but my wife does.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

You're[personalizations deleted]

t-folk, I don't know what is eating you, but you should do something more constructive about it than going all high school on these fora.  You have formed some clear preconceptions of who and what I am, and while you are hilariously wrong, the bottom line issue is that nobody else on this forum really cares what you think of me.

If you are here to support sockgumbee's arguments or take issue with mine, then please do so.  From your posts on the astronomy thread you appear able to articulate statements about science with some clarity.  - DvF

[t_folk]

You're[personalizations deleted]

t-folk, I don't know what is eating you, but you should do something more constructive about it than going all high school on these fora.  You have formed some clear preconceptions of who and what I am, and while you are hilariously wrong, the bottom line issue is that nobody else on this forum really cares what you think of me.

If you are here to support sockgumbee's arguments or take issue with mine, then please do so.  From your posts on the astronomy thread you appear able to articulate statements about science with some clarity.  - DvF

Ah, but appearances can be misleading.

Now, to avoid future conflict, I really am just being playful. I think you and I both are victim to, what amount to, a string of misunderstandings. Please, do not take any offense. Truce.

As far as sockgumbee, initially, I think hu was only trying to articulate that Western modes of thought are quite different from the worldview of non-Western peoples and thus non-Western people somehow/sometimes struggle to grasp Western concepts, scientific methods, laws, culture, etc. It is similar to something I had posted earlier about the arrogance of whites in their belief that, essentially, "white makes right." Yet, at this point, hu's argument, as well as those of others, has descended into the pit of semantical despair (the fate of so many threads on this forum), alas, never to return.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

As far as sockgumbee, initially, I think hu was only trying to articulate that Western modes of thought are quite different from the worldview of non-Western peoples and thus non-Western people somehow/sometimes struggle to grasp Western concepts, scientific methods, laws, culture, etc.

I thought that was the case too, which is why back on p.7 I wrote

Incidentally, there is excellent work being done on culturally-dependent teaching models, for example Uri Treisman's important work on improving Calculus learning among African-Americans.  I would love to see this extended to as many communities as possible.

I thought this was essentially a statements of agreement with sockgumbee's position, but s/he seemed to take umbrage at it (or maybe at rockprof's subsequent post, which simply tried to contrast culturally-dependent teaching with teaching culturally-dependent content).  - DvF

[sockgumbee]

I promise to respond to DvF request for science teaching and Native Americans.
However I also promise it will be long with many links and will take up multiple posts. However I will do my best to keep the individual posts concise, and start sometime this week.

I'm still busy looking for a place--I put the reason why in the venting thread.

But just a quick note to remind folks that what works with African-American populations will not necessarily work with Native Americans or Hmong or whoever. To put all those folks in the same basket re: traditional knowledge or remedial needs or special teaching methods does a disservice.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

But just a quick note to remind folks that what works with African-American populations will not necessarily work with Native Americans or Hmong or whoever. To put all those folks in the same basket re: traditional knowledge or remedial needs or special teaching methods does a disservice.

Of course!  I am not suggesting that the recommendations stemming from Treisman's work with African-American kids be applied to Native Americans; I think that the kind if effort he made to discover what needs to be done should be extended to other groups.  If this is what you have been supporting, then we have no argument. - DvF

[minnesotan]

Why is it almost impossible to buy cosmetics in Asia that do not contain skin whitener?

Not that I buy cosmetics, but my wife does.

Yeah.  "I have this friend who buys cosmetics." 

We believe you.

[st_alfonso]

But just a quick note to remind folks that what works with African-American populations will not necessarily work with Native Americans or Hmong or whoever. To put all those folks in the same basket re: traditional knowledge or remedial needs or special teaching methods does a disservice.

Possibly, true, but assuming what works with other populations does not work with a certain population is also a disservice. For example, IQ research suggests that Native people perform better on the the performance components of IQ tests relative to the verbal components. These results should be restricted to the dozen or so tribes that are represented by this research. Instead what do you hear in eduction circles? You hear things like Native children are spatial learners and they need highly visual and interactive environments. Nevermind that most children, especially the very young, thrive in highly visual and interactive learning environments. So what do hear "experts" telling teachers of native teachers to do? You guessed it, increase the visual and active components in the teaching environment. This recommendation is due to the commonly held belief (which I believe is in error) that Native students are "spatial learners". But what of the verbal scores on the IQ? Is this really a cultural or cognitive differences between Natives and Anglos? Or, can they be attributed to second language learning, opportunity to learn, community poverty, motivation, parenting, etc? In other words, some of these differences that you're capitalizing upon and making a living off are not necessarily due to cultural and racial differences instead they are possibly caused by deficits in input.

Disagree? Go visit several schools on an Indian reservation and then visit several in a city. What will you see. In the reservation schools you'll see large numbers of beginning teachers, high teacher and administrator turnover and low salaries. In the city schools you see greater faculty stability, more experienced teachers and higher (albeit some one argue low) salaries. Now, if you visit exclusively inner-city schools inhabited by African-American children you will likely see circumstances that are similar to the reservation schools. This is why some of the teaching strategies generated from experience with African-Americans are likely to be effective with Native children. This does not mean strategies should be blindly applied from one group to another; they should applied while collecting evidence regarding their effectiveness. This is quite different than declaring a group is completely different than another and as a consequence alternative ways of knowing/teaching are required.

[st_alfonso]

To make matters more complicated, I get the impression that the primary exposure to science that Sockgumbee has is social science and not physical or life science. 

Just ducking in for a moment: I teach social sciences on a STEM campus. The sciences are not that different in their basic requirements (hypothesis creation, data gathering, theory development, etc.). We may diverge in methodologies (anth and women's studies rely mostly on qualitative methods, while sociologists/economists/polisci folks like their methods to be quantitative), but the requirements of replicability and reliability are shared (but may look different).

The data are very different: human beings create their own ways of knowing and we try to understand/analyze/compare those different epistemologies. But how we do that is still fundamentally a science.

Now, the humanities on the other paw ... very different!

Ducking out again.

This is the first time that I have ever heard this argument.  I don't think that developing hypotheses and using quantitative data is sufficient to make the social sciences and sciences have anything more than a superficial similarity.

Define science. It really has nothing to due with the topic of study.

[polly_mer]

Define science. It really has nothing to due with the topic of study.

Well, yes and no and maybe.

I think of science as a method to explore the world and as a standardized framework of knowledge.  However, some things are difficult, if not impossible, to study scientifically.  Some things can be studied scientifically, but the results are not particularly useful.

Art can be studied scientifically, but I don't think the results have anything to do with art.

Many of the social sciences, particularly for the qualitative fields, use a standardized, logical, repeatable method, but the results are inapplicable to similar situations and cannot be made into a predictive model.  In addition, because the underlying parameters change, the results aren't even necessarily applicable to the current version of the same population.

Is that science?  Well, maybe.  However, it's not at all the same as chemistry where mixing an acid and a base will give the same results, repeatably, regardless of who does the mixing or the exact details of the mixing process.

Are social sciences valuable?  Yes. 

Should people use the best tools available even if those tools give imperfect results?  Yes. 

Should we change the way we teach physical science because social science is different? Nope.

Social science studies of how people learn can give us good information on how to teach physical science and we should use that information to make improvements in teaching methods.  However, we should not mistake of saying that anyone who claims to be a scientist means exactly the same thing by science as other people who also use the name scientist.  I won't even discuss the people who have no idea what it means to be a scientist, but use the term because it sounds impressive.