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Re: [Phys-l] lab safety rules +- time on task +- symbolism



In this thread, John Denker partly returns to the topics of time-on-task, grades, and goals of education. There is much of what John says that I totally agree with. Here is at least a partial rundown of things I agree with.

[1] Time-on-task is not the same thing as education gained, and it doesn't even guarantee that any increase in knowledge or skill took place in that time.

[2] Likewise, good (or bad) grades do not necessarily equate with high (or low) understanding of the material or with high (or low) skill level.

[3] The goal of education is increased knowledge, understanding, skill, etc. and these are the benefits we need to seek and evaluate. Proxies for these are not the same thing as these things themselves.

At one point John said, " Cue the sound of fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. " Goodness... how many times have I felt exactly that way when a boss or administrator has decided I need to attend some meeting, or seminar, or be subject to a post-tenure review, etc.

I would say the problems with John's comments is they are incomplete in the sense they don't offer good alternatives, and also incomplete because an additional point of mistaking a proxy for the real thing is left out.

[omitted proxy] Thinking you know/understand something is not the same as knowing/understanding. Likewise, having a boss or administrator or teacher thinking you understand (or don't understand) something is not the same as understanding (or not understanding).

I don't particularly care for the present promotion, tenure, salary increment system that I find myself in, because it is mostly based on years of service as opposed to the value of my service. But I care much less, and even fear, a system in which some administrator bases these things on some sort of merit system. The systems in which administrators exercise some degree of judgment over promotions, tenure, salary are those very systems that permit cronyism, glass ceilings (especially sexism, but also racism and personality conflicts), age discrimination, etc.

Academic deans at small universities don't tend to last very long. At Bluffton University I have been through nine different academic deans in 33 years. (I have also been through three different presidents.) Five of those deans pretty much loved me and thought I was a great asset to the university. One of nine was oblivious to me. The other three of the nine hated me, thought I was bad for the university, and wanted to get rid of me. Fortunately, the ones who wanted to oust me were in office after I received tenure. They made it difficult for me, but they were not successful in getting rid of me. The funny thing is, one of the first deans I experienced, who is now retired but still lives in the area, recently told me that over the period of time he has known me, he has viewed my personality, talent, and contributions to the university as remarkably consistent. That would also be my opinion of myself. The point is, how could I be doing roughly the same good (or bad) service for the institution for 33 years, but some administrators viewed me as very good while others viewed me as very bad?

It's nice when the people over you believe you have skills and talents. If these people are truly skilled at evaluating you, such that their judgment of your skills is valid, it may be possible to avoid some of those "fingernails on the blackboard" hurdles. On the other hand, when the people over you are not skilled evaluators, or for some reason end up thinking you are not competent, then jumping the hurdles may be the best way to keep your job and endure the bad boss.

The governor of Ohio recently got the state legislature to pass "Senate Bill 5" that among other things prohibits collective bargaining for state employees. This will be up for repeal on the November ballot because Ohioans signed public-initiative petitions at a rate that gave us about four times more signatures than required to get the law on the general ballot for repeal.

My wife teaches in the local public school, and she is president of the local teacher's union. She and the superintendent have a very good working relationship. I also work with the superintendent every time we put a new school levy on the ballot. I believe our current superintendent is one of the best administrators I have met. Concerning Senate Bill #5, the superintendent, school board, and teachers union rapidly voted in a three-year contract to get it in place before Senate Bill #5 became law. If the law is not repealed, this will give the superintendent and school board three years to figure out how to deal with the law. The law throws out pay scales based on years of service, and mandates that salary be determined by merit. Although merit partly must be based on standardized testing (that few people believe is valid), it also ends up being judgment calls of principals, the superintendent, and the school board.

Although some might say it is the job of the administrators to make these calls, it is really, really difficult... and our current administrators would rather have merit pay play a minor role instead of a major role. I have faith that the current public school administrators would do a pretty good job, but I have worked with some who wouldn't. I also see chaos amongst teachers because half of the teachers will get salary above the average, and half will get salary below the average, and those who are judged below average are going to be really ticked off. I'm already hearing some teachers compare themselves to others and saying things like, "I better get a higher raise than (so-and-so) because I am way better... but I think (such-and-such administrator) likes them better." What a mess this is going to be.

The bottom line is that I am unaware of a better system than grades and time-on-task even though I know these are far from perfect.

One more point about time-on-task. I hope I haven't come across as supporting 3-hours per week on task for each hour of credit just because that's "the rule", or because it will make all my students scholars, or that all students need it. Rather, I try to give reasonable assignments that provide reasonable practice without becoming time wasters. When it becomes obvious that a student is not getting it, I don't care whether they spent 15 minutes on the assignment or two hours on the assignment. Whatever it was that they did clearly did not work. If they report to me that they only spent 15 minutes on my course outside of class in a given week, then I am inclined to believe that lack of sufficient time-on-task was the primary culprit of their lack of learning. I may be wrong, but that is the obvious first guess. If they report that they spent 20 hours studying/working for my course, then I am inclined to believe there is a different problem. My first inclination in this case to see how they are spending those 20 hours and see if we can make them more efficient. Although it still could be that this particular student needs more time on task, they probably don't have the time, and higher efficiency is probably the goal.


Michael D. Edmiston, PhD.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Chair, Division of Natural and Applied Sciences
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
Office 419-358-3270
Cell 419-230-9657

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of John Denker
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 6:53 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: [Phys-l] lab safety rules +- time on task +- symbolism

On 09/11/2011 02:31 PM, David Marx wrote:
No, the accident that triggered a major surge in safety inspections
and regulation occurred at another national lab around 1990 when a
graduate student was blinded by a laser on her(?) first day on the
job. The story goes that the superviser of that student went to
Washington to demand massive new safety inspections, training, etc.
Subsequently, safety inspections took place at all of the national
labs and many things were found and subsequently fixed, but it didn't
stop there. People have simply gone crazy over the years pointing at
things in labs and saying they are unsafe to the point that no one can
do anythng.

I don't buy it.

I have personally worked at NIST under the post-1990 safety rules, which are almost certainly the same rules that apply at Argonne.

To say that safety has gotten "to the point that no one can do anything" is ludicrous.
-- With one tiny exception, I hold myself to standards that
are *higher* than what the federal rules require.
-- I will mention the exception not to complain, but to show
just how tiny it is: The requirement as to "no unlabeled
reagents" was interpreted so strictly as to forbid an
unlabeled beaker of water, even though I knew what it was
and was sitting only a few feet away. Left to my own
devices, I wouldn't have labeled such a beaker ... but on
the other hand, I could see the goal of the regulation,
and I support the goal, and most importantly, the burden
of labeling the beaker wasn't going to make me or anyone
else unable to "do anything".
-- While I was there, a researcher suffered serious permanent
eye injury ... so you really can't tell me that the rules
are too strict or too zealously enforced. Sorry.

===========

Now let me return to the "time on task" discussion from last week. The only thing at NIST that I would complain about was that I had to attend a certain amount of safety training every so often. This was measured in terms of "time on task" i.e.
time sitting in the training room, not measured by how well I understood the issues. I had to put in the hours, even though everybody in the place knew my personal standards were tighter than the official standards.

This is a blatant violation of the principle that says you should measure the thing you care about.

Closely parallel remarks apply in another situation: To keep my flight instructor certificate, every two years I have to sit through an FAA-approved "Flight Instructor Refresher Course" (FIRC). In order to be approved, an FIRC has to involve 16 hours of "time on task". Cue the sound of fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. The fact that I've attended a lot more than 16 hours of seminars over the last two years, and indeed /led/ more than 16 hours of seminars covering the same material (more broadly and deeply) doesn't count; they want to see 16 hours of time on task. At the end of the FIRC there is a test. Why not put more emphasis on measuring the thing you care about? Why not start by giving a test, and if the student gets less than 100% then we can talk about which ones were missed.

The only good thing about this FIRC requirement is that there is such a thing as an online FIRC, which means I can sit at home and read a book and actually learn something while also paying enough attention to the FIRC to make sure I don't miss anything.

============

One more aviation story to illustrate the point I am making:
Suppose a student pilot moves the landing gear switch to the Down position and says "Gear down." We are going to have a conversation about that. That switch is related to the landing gear, but it is not the landing gear. The switch lever is even decorated with a miniature wheel, symbolizing the landing gear, but still it is not the landing gear. The proverb is:
"Do not mistake the symbol for the thing symbolized."
In particular, there are dozens of reasons why the actual landing gear might not be down, even though the switch is down. There could be a hydraulic leak, or the circuit breaker could be blown. At some point the wily flight instructor is going to help you out by pulling the circuit breaker and making sure you notice. The conversation also always covers the various indications you can use to close the loop, i.e. to make sure the actual landing gear is actually down-and-locked.

Sometimes in the physics lab, and in life in general, we cannot directly measure the thing we care about ... in which case we have to measure some proxy variables and do the conversion. However, the same logic applies:
"Do not mistake the proxy for the thing
you actually care about."

This is relevant because "time on task" is not the thing you care about. You ought to care about knowing the course material, knowing how to think, and knowing how to do things.
"Time on task" may be weakly predictive of something useful, but only very weakly, and there are even some situations where it is _anti_correlated with the things you care about.

As another example, grades and GPAs are not the thing that anybody ought to care about. You ought to care about knowing the course material, knowing how to think, and knowing how to do things. Under some conditions, a GPA might serve as a proxy for those things, but it is not a very good proxy, and there are plennnty of situations where it is _anti_correlated with the things you care about.

-- People will optimize the thing that gets measured, so
be careful what you measure.
-- Measure the thing you care about.
-- Do not mistake the proxy for the thing you actually
care about.
-- Do not mistake the symbol for the thing symbolized.
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