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#5: WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING



Excerpt #5: WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING

[Jane's preparatory comments: Read carefully the section below on
collaboration in connected-knowing groups. Consider it in the light of
this statement made by David Griffiths of Reed College in his Millikan
Medal lecture at the 1997 AAPT Summer meeting about declining enrollments
(AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS, Dec. 1997, p. 1142):
Griffiths said, "...I happen to think it is very significant. It's
the thing that came closest to driving ME out of the field, and I believe
it's the main reason why so few women choose physics: As a group,
physicists are notoriously harsh on one another and arrogant toward others.
There is a nasty competitive quality to much of our professional discourse
- a kind of school-yard ranking - that is as demoralizing, to some, as it
is distasteful.... Carleton College consistently produces a large number of
outstanding physics students, a strikingly high proportion of whom are
women. I have asked them how they do it, and the answer seems to be that
they have managed to create an atmosphere in which the study of physics is
A SUPPORTIVE COMMUNAL ACTIVITY, not an arena for exercising infantile
machismo - and they have done so without sacrificing the rigor and
discipline of their progam." This sounds like connected knowing groups as
the authors describe them.

This is exciting to me, for I see connected knowing as well in the
group work in the modeling method of high school physics instruction. The
paper by Malcolm Wells, David Hestenes, and Gregg Swackhamer in the
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS, July 1995, describes how collaboration occurs
in the classroom. Our www page also has a description:
modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html.
Teachers who use the modeling method typically tell me that half
their class are women, compared to a much smaller percentage beforehand
when they used traditional methods. Usually students and teachers love the
method; enrollments typically increase. The gains on the Force Concept
Inventory are much better than with traditional instruction, too.

I think that the modeling method is successful in part because it
promotes connected knowing but also because it includes, as part of the
modeling process, these elements that Joseph Amato (Colgate University)
stresses as vital in student research projects: experimental design, data
acquisition, analysis, and heavy emphasis on oral and written presentation.
Amato says, "For most of our students, this research exposure is the most
memorable, satisfying, and demanding experience of their undergraduate
education". (AAPT ANNOUNCER, Dec. 1997, p. 132.) High school students
learning physics by the modeling method say the same thing.
Amato wrote me today and answered a question I had about whether
their students who are doing research collaborate in groups: he said yes,
that students work in groups of 3 or 4 and "there is often a strong sense
of shared responsibility and shared knowledge within a group. Still, each
student within the group has a distinct assignment and the sole
responsibility (aside from the faculty member) for carrying out that
assignment." About 1/3 of their physics students are women, he said.
Colgate and Carleton both are in the top group of non-PhD granting
institutions in terms of the number of B.S. degrees in physics. See the
article in the Jan. '98 AJP - mine arrived yesterday.

Collaborative connected knowing groups are an important way that we
physics teachers can assist our students in developing intellectually.]
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COLLABORATION IN CONNECTED-KNOWING GROUPS
(stage 3: Procedural knowers - continued)

"It is helpful for both separate and connected knowers to meet in
groups of two or more people. Separate knowers bring to their group
propositions that they have developed as fully as possible and that they
hope to sell in the free marketplace of ideas. Members must know the
rules, but they need not know each other. In connected-knowing groups,
people utter half-baked half-truths and ask others to nurture them. Since
no one would entrust one's fragile infant to a stranger, members of the
group must learn to know and trust each other. In such an atmosphere
members do engage in criticism,but the criticism is 'connected'. ...
People can criticize each other's work in such a class "and accept each
other's criticisms because members of the group shared a similar
experience. This is the only sort of expertise connected knowers recognize,
the only sort of criticism they easily accept. Authority in connected
knowing rests not on power or status or certification but on commonality of
experience."
"Separate knowers try to subtract the personality of the perceiver
from the perception, because they see personality as slanting the
perception or adding 'noise' that must be filtered out. Connected knowers
see personality as adding to the perception, and so the personality of each
member of the group enriches the group's understanding. Each individual
must stretch her own vision in order to share another's vision. Through
mutual stretching and sharing the group achieves a vision richer than any
individual could achieve alone.
Connected knowing works best when members of the group meet over a
long period of time and get to know each other well. One of the women we
interviewed spent two years in a very small college where most of the
classes were conducted as seminars. She then transferred to a large
college, where she enrolled in a seminar on modern British poetry, one of
her favorite topics. 'It was awful. The people didn't know how to talk
about anything. They didn't know how to share ideas. It was always an
argument; it wasn't an idea to be developed, to be explored.' [At her
small college] 'it was like a family group trying to work out a family
problem, except it was an idea.' "

"Judging from the stories [the connected knowers] told, the kind of
self-analysis required for complex connected knowing has been largely
excluded from the traditional liberal arts curriculum and relegated to
'counseling'."

Jane Jackson, Prof. of Physics, Scottsdale Comm.College (on leave)
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics, ASU, Tempe, AZ 85287.
602-965-8438/fax:965-7331. http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html
Genius must transform the world, that the world may produce more genius.