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Re: WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING/physics courses



Mark,

I certainly can't claim to be an expert on "naturalistic" vs
"quantitative" research in psychology or sociology;

I don't either, but I have been reading Lincoln and Guba's book. Very
interesting.

however, I thought
that the motivation for "naturalistic" research in these area (for the
non-cogniscenti "naturalistic" is the kind of non-intrusive, observational
research that the old-fashioned "naturalist" biologists did) was to
establish hypotheses to be tested by much more rigorous quantitative work.

Actually, the term "naturalistic" in Lincoln and Guba's book (Naturalistic
Inquiry, Sage Press) does not include the notion of "non-intrusive" in the
objectivist sense. Certainly disruption of the "system" being studied is
intended to be minimal, but it is recognized that interaction with the
observers/interviewers may have some effect on things.

Thus, WWK might be viewed as a collection of hypotheses to be tested, but
not as results to be accepted.....

I doubt the authors would disagree with you. Isn't this true of what we as
physicists have to say about our theories concerning the physical world?

In a slightly different, but related vein, I ran across an essay
by Michael R. Mathews offering a critique of the "constructivist" view of
educational philosophy that you might be interested in reading. It is
entitled "Old Wine in New Bottles: A Problem with Constructivist
Epistemology", and it is available on the web at

http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/PES/92_docs/Matthews.HTM

It is not so true, I think, that there is an essentially agreed upon
paradigmatic view (in a Kuhnian sense) shared by some majority of those in
science or math education as Matthews seems to suggest. He suggests that
differences are 'domestic disputes.' I suspect that no small number of the
readers can attest to the fact that 'domestic disputes' can be profound and
alienating.

Even though he states it fairly clearly, it is interesting that Matthews
fails to realize that the fundamental issue is:

"we only have our sensations to reflect upon, and so we are never able to
judge correspondence between our ideas and the world [independently of our
sensations]."

The alternatives he offers are all fundamentally incompatible with this
view. He never seems to get at a convincing argument as to why one should
abandon this view; i.e., why the view should be considered "unpalatable".

He's also pretty good at rhetorical ploys. Associating radical
constructivism with Aristotelianism was a 'good one.' But, I don't think
that a radical constructivist would agree with the premise that "the world
imprinted empirical knowledge on the subject through ordinary unmediated
sense-perception" as Matthews suggests Aristotelianism holds. It never
seems to be convincing to someone who know the position being described to
use an argument based on one of these ploys since the position (in this
case, constructivism) isn't what it's represented as.

Michael has worked on this issue for a long time. The article cited above
seems to reveal that his grasp of constructivism might be better than
previous things I've read. He still seems not to recognize that radical
constructivists make a distinction between knowledge as statements
describing experience and knowledge as meaning associated with experience.

His suggestion that you do not have to be constructivist to accept
suggestions about education appears to apply to the examples he offers, but
these are all minor modifications of science teaching as it is practiced.
He seems to be making the argument that the demands of teaching do not
require one to be a constructivist. He says he wants to 'rescue
constructivist pedagogy,' whatever that actually is. But, his premise is
not nearly so strong when one looks deeper at instructional alternatives
consistent with constructivist 'post-epistemological' views. Examples from
Cobb, Wood and Yackel or Steffe in math education and people such as M. G.
Hennessey in science education come to mind.

It seems to me that if you throw out all the mis-representations,
rhetorical ploys, etc. then one of the the bottom lines in these 'debates'
is:

either we can, through reflecting on our sensations, know what the world
actually is (or pieces of it actually are) or we cannot.

I don't see how those who think it _is_ possible can 'prove they are right'
any more than those who think it _is not_ possible can. I've read a lot of
attempts on both sides. It's always worth looking for _new_ lines of real
argument, but I haven't seen any in a while. Unfortunately, very few
trying to 'prove constructivism wrong' seem to focus why it must or should
be that we can know what the world actually is by addressing the reasons
presented by constructivists as to why they don't think so. Maturana and
Varela, two biologists, would be good to look at on this in order to
address 'scientific' issues of perception and knowing and von Glasersfeld
would be as good a source as any on the 'philosophical' issues.

Rather than arguing over constructivism, I think that it would be more
productive either to address the differences in fundamental premises or
better, for now look at the actual issues in physics learning and teaching
by following Dan MacIsaac's suggestion and look at EJSE, in particular at a
reprint of Lillian McDermott's article: How we teach and how students
learn - A mismatch? which can be found at...

http://unr.edu/homepage/jcannon/ejse/mcdermott.html

Hope your New Year has started and continues to be Happy.

Dewey


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper

"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,
1938.
"Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct
of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence."
--E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958.
"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in
There Are No Electrons, 1991.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++