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Re: Developmental stages of thinking (4:reason; connected knowing)



All right already - enough - you've convinced me. Despite my 20 years teaching
experience to the contrary, you've clearly demonstrated that women are unfit
for the physics academic environment. I'll ignore the fact that of the three or
four A's I give out each semester in General Physics, I have never had a case
where at least two of them went to a female student. I'll ignore the fact that
two years ago a young woman went through our program with a 4.0 overall GPA
(and double majored to boot!)

"A special way of knowing" - my foot!

Bob at Providence College

Jane Jackson wrote:

Synopsis: WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING: STAGE 3 (cont.)

The second type of procedural knowledge (stage 3 of their 4 stages
of intellectual development) that the authors of WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING
found in their interviews is called CONNECTED KNOWING. Unlike separate
knowing, where the epistemological orientation is toward impersonal rules,
the epistemological orientation here is toward relationship. "In an attempt
to achieve a kind of harmony with another person in spite of difference and
distance, [connected knowers] try to enter the other person's frame to
discover the premises for the other's point of view. The other may be a
teacher but is more likely to be a peer and may be a long-dead poet. The
focus is not on how They want you to think, as in Perry's account, but on
how they (the lower case 't' symbolizing more equal status) think; and the
purpose is not justification but connection." The focus is on intimacy and
equality between self and object, rather than separation from the object
and mastery over it.
"Connected knowing builds on the subjectivists' conviction that the
most trustworthy knowledge comes from personal experience rather than the
pronouncements of authorities." Accordingly, "Connected knowers develop
procedures for gaining access to other people's knowledge. At the heart of
these procedures is the capacity for empathy. Since knowledge comes from
experience, the only way they can hope to understand another person's ideas
is to try to share the experience that has led the person to form the
idea." Connected knowers know that they can only approximate other
people's experiences and so can gain only limited access to their
knowledge. But insofar as possible, they must act as connected rather than
separate selves, seeing the other not in their own terms but in the other's
terms. P. Elbow (WRITING WITHOUT TEACHERS, 1973) calls this procedure the
'believing game', and he says it is very hard to play. Although it may be
difficult for men, many women find it easier to believe than to doubt. An
undergraduate we interviewed said, 'I'm not superanalytic. It's easy for me
to take other people's points of view. It's hard for me to argue, because I
feel like I can understand the other person's argument. It's easy for me to
see a whole lot of different points of view on things and to understand why
people think those things.'
And, while women frequently do experience doubting as a game,
believing feels real to them, perhaps because it is founded upon genuine
care and because it promises to reveal the kind of truth they value - truth
that is personal, particular, and grounded in firsthand experience. This
comes through most clearly in their accounts of conversations."
For example, in conversations, " 'Why do you think that?' they ask,
meaning not 'What were the steps in your reasoning?' but "What
circumstances led you to that perception?' This is not like an oral
examination in which the respondent must prove that she knows what she is
supposed to know.... It is more like a clinical interview. By inviting the
respondent to tell her story, without interruption, the questioner allows
the respondent to control and develop her own response."
"Connected knowers begin with an interest in the facts of other
people's lives, but they gradually shift the focus to other people's ways
of thinking. As in all procedural knowing, it is the form rather than the
content of knowing that is central. Separate knowers learn through explicit
formal instruction how to adopt a different lens - how, for example, to
think like a sociologist. Connected knowers learn through empathy."
Empathy involves receptivity. "In describing connected knowing, the
women we interviewed used images not of invading another mind but of
opening up to receive another's experience into their own minds."
"Connected knowers begin with an attitude of trust; they assume the
other person has something good to say....Connected knowers do not measure
other people's words by some impersonal standard. Their purpose is not to
judge but to understand.
Women seem to take naturally to a nonjudgmental stance. In teaching
undergraduates we have found it necessary to ask many of the males to
refrain from making judgments until they understood the topic. On the other
hand, we have often had to prod the females into critical examination: Even
when they disagreed vehemently with an opinion, they hesitated to judge it
wrong until they had tried hard to understand the reasoning behind it."
This involves patience, waiting, forbearance.
The theme of understanding (implying personal acquaintance with an
object) is more prominent in connected knowing, and the theme of knowledge
(implying separation from the object and mastery over it) is more prominent
in separate knowing, although both themes are present in both types of
procedural knowledge. In connected knowledge, "The mode of knowing is
personal, but the object of knowing need not be. It may be a painting, for
example..."
[At this point the authors allude to Evelyn Fox Keller's biography
of the Nobel prize winner Barbara McClintock, a geneticist, for an example
of a scientist who exhibits connected knowing with impersonal objects.]
-----------------------------------
Connected knowing seems to lead best to the next stage (Stage 4), which is
constructed knowing or constructivism.

[Jane's reflection:
The reason that men aren't well oriented to connected knowing in our
society is cultural, apparently. In Japan, for example, a close
interdependence between men is valued. I've heard that Japanese
businessmen always begin a conversation by asking about the other's family
- whereas this isn't done in the U.S. The authors of this book paraphrase
Jerome Kagan as arguing that "Americans valuing independence and
individuality in adults tend to see the baby as being dependent and
undifferentiated from others. In contrast, the Japanese, valuing a close
interdependence between people, see the infant as too autonomous and
needing to be coaxed into a dependent role in order to encourage the mutual
bonding necessary for adult life. The more we come to understand and value
attachment and connectedness in adults,the more likely we will
conceptualize autonomy and independence as part of the infant's nature and
ACT TO ENCOURAGE THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAPACITY FOR CONNECTING WITH
OTHERS."]
----------------------------------

Jane Jackson, Co-Director, Modeling Instruction Program
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics & Astronomy,ASU,Tempe,AZ 85287
480-965-8438/fax:965-7331 <http://modeling.asu.edu>
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is
our inability to understand the exponential function."
- Al Bartlett, Prof of Physics, Univ of Colorado