re: WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING/physics courses

[jane.jackson@asu.edu (Jane Jackson)]

Herb Gottlieb posted the following 8 questions about the book WOMEN'S WAYS
OF KNOWING - applied to physics courses.

I had said:
>  The authors interviewed 135 women (ages 16 to 60) over 5 years and
> watched them move from one stage to the next. About half of the 135
women never >got to stage 3.

Herb asked:
Q1. Which half never got to stage 3? Those from ages 16 to 35 or those
from 35 to 60?

        Answer: It's not as simple as that.  You can't separate out the age
groups - that's what surprised the authors. Even some women in their 60's
still can't think things out logically but rely only on their "gut"
instincts; i.e., are still at stage 1 (received knowing or dualism) or
stage 2 (subjectivism or multiplicity).  That's terrible, isn't it!  Our
society can do much better if we educate intelligently.
        I bet that a similar situation is true of men, for the four stages
of intellectual development in women are like those of men, in many ways.
        It's important to recognize that part of the causes of the
differences between men's and women's intellectual development are
cultural; and part are hormonal, I'm sure.

Q2. When a woman moves from one stage to another, how long does it take
to complete such a move once she starts moving? Instantaneously?  An
hour?  A day? A week?  A year?  5 years?

Answer: from my reading of the book and my experience with the modeling
method in high school physics instruction, it looks as though the process
can be completed over a period of weeks or months in a certain area of
their life, if the person is guided well by teachers, parents, or other
mentors. For example, the modeling method focuses on stage 3 (procedural
knowing), and many high school students start out hating it because they
aren't allowed to memorize, but they enjoy it after a month or two, and by
the end of the year they express their thankfulness to the teacher for
teaching them to think. And gains on the Force Concept Inventory are much
higher than by traditional teaching methods.
        However, people tend to compartmentalize their lives, so a person
can be at stage 3 (procedural knowing) in their academic life but at stage
2 (subjectivism) in their nonacademic life, as the authors found of women
at traditional colleges where "separate knowing" was required for academic
success, rather than "connected knowing".

Q3.  If the moving time varies from one woman to another what is the mean
time, the mode, and the median time to start making a move and then
complete it?

I wonder.  That's a question for future studies. It would need to be done
in a given context.


Q4. How can we tell when the move from stages 1 to stage 2 is 10%
complete? 20%?      50% ?    75%    or  100% complete?

New York University is near you, right?  Nancy Goldberger, one of the
authors, was on the faculty there when she wrote the book.  How about
Lesley College: is that near you?  Jill Tarule was Assoc. Prof. of
Psychology.  Perhaps you could ask them. The other authors are Mary
Belenky, who was at the U. of Vermont, and Blythe Clinchy, Prof. of
Psychology at Wellesley College.  Does anyone know any of these people? If
so, please post their e-mail addresses or phone numbers so that we can ask
them.

Herb asked:  Is it ever fully completed?.

        Answer: Sure.  All of us are examples of that.  The stages of
intellectual development apply to men as well as women, broadly speaking,
so you can think back on your life and see when you were at each stage.  I
have the impression that K - 12 teachers study Perry's work in their
required developmental psychology course in college, so you could ask a
young colleague to borrow his/her text for that course.


> The women who were in stages 1  and 2  "DID NOT place "an
> emphasis on procedures, skills, and techniques" and DID NOT "conceive
> knowledge as a process"!

Q5. What type of PROCEDURES did they fail to emphasize?
Q6.  What SKILLS did they fail to emphasize?
Q7. What TECHNIQUES did they fail to emphasize?

        Procedures, skills and techniques required in thinking logically,
say in college courses.
        The interview questions were directed toward the women's
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. They were broad in scope. One question was this,
asked of college women: The author of the book gave the following statement
on a card to the interviewee. The author prefaced by saying that the
statement is a comment by someone else: "In areas where the right answers
are known, I think the experts should tell us what is right. But in areas
where there is no right answer, I think anybody's opinion is as good as
another." The author asked the interviewee to read the statement aloud and
then to comment on it - in 11 ways.  A few are:
a) In learning about something you really want to know, can you rely on experts?
b) How do you know someone is an expert?
c) How do you know what's right/true?
d) Do you agree with this person who says that, where there are no right
answers, anybody's opinion is as good as another's?

> The question is, HOW CAN WE PHYSICS TEACHERS ASSIST IN THE
> INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF OUR STUDENTS (both female and male), >USING
THE INSIGHTS OF THIS STUDY?
>
Q8. Exactly what are the INSIGHTS of this study?

        The study is important because it gives us insights as to WHY
teaching by telling is ineffective for most students (except those at stage
4: constructivists - who have the ability to go home from lectures and
reconstruct the knowledge for themselves on their own. I remember that
Donald Simonek has posted on how he used to do this in college.).
        If you are a high school teacher or a college teacher and you teach
physics by traditional lecture/demo methods primarily as a body of facts:
(1) You will attract students at stage 1 (received knowers), but they will
memorize rather than understand; later they'll move to stage 2
(multiplicity, subjectivism) and will reject the received knowledge from
you, the expert. So you aren't helping them develop their minds by
lecturing.
(2) Students who are at stage 2 (subjectivism, multiplicity) won't sign up
for your course, so you have no hope of assisting them.  Studies show that
many college women, for example, start out as science majors but then
switch out.  Sheila Tobias has written on this.
(3) Students who are at stage 3 (procedural knowers) are tempted to revert
back to memorizing, as is known from many studies of novice problem solving
by physics students in traditional courses.  I know this from my community
college teaching of trig-based and calculus-based general physics.  They
may earn an "A" but still show poor gains on the Force Concept Inventory,
for example.  Their procedural knowing isn't reinforced adequately, and
they are not helped in moving to stage 4: constructing their own knowledge.

        This study is important for us!  The study by these authors and
those by Perry and others show us that constructivist methods, which start
by giving students their own EXPERIENCES with nature and then lead them
through the processes and procedures of science to construct their own
knowledge, are the appropriate methods for teaching most young people, who
are likely to be at stage 2 (subjectivists, multiplists) or stage 3
(procedural knowers).  The students' intellectual development will be
enhanced even further if collaborative connected-knowing groups are used in
the classroom.  (I'll post on these in a few days. I don't want to
overwhelm you with too many words all on one day.)


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.