Random Musings on Teaching In Higher Education (2)

Teaching Values in Higher Education

Recently I received an email about medicine with this equation

E² - evidence + experience = good medicine

I beg to differ from my learned colleague whom I respect very much. While the practice of medicine has improved with the introduction of evidence-based medicine, it is important to realize that evidence based-medicine is not the holy grail of medical standards. Even the highest level of meta-analysis has its limitation. It is just a statistical program which analyses data fed into it. It is important not to forget the old axiom: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Also not everything that is done in the practice of medicine is available in the evidence-based medicine databases.

Experience is a good teacher but repetition is not a proof of expertise or even of competence. A doctor may be repeating the same mistake repeatedly. However, not repeating mistakes and increased competence may be achieved by combining evidence with experience. I believe that there is still another component to the equation. This component is good character. Thus I will suggest that the equation should be

E²GC- evidence + experience + good character = good medicine

I believed that good medicine can only be practiced by a doctor with good character. I have seen surgeons who have excellent surgical skills who could not bother with whom they operated upon. “The operation was successful but the patient died” was their creed. I have seen doctors who treat their patients as objects- some problems to be solved and then move on. True care, concern and compassion can only come out of good character. Good characters are formed by good beliefs.

It is a fallacy in many institutions of higher learning that knowing will automatically lead to believing. For example, if we teach our students to be compassionate to their patients, they will automatically be compassionate because of their knowledge. Unfortunately this is not true.

Educator Emeritus Professor Brian Hill of Murdock University identifies in How Learners Respond to the Teaching of Beliefs and Values the three dimensions in how students respond to the teaching of values. These dimensions are the psychological dimensions of the cognitive, the emotional, and the volitional. While writing about teaching in schools, I believe his findings have implications in centers of higher learning. The possible response of a student to the teaching of a value X may be:

Cognitive

(1) I don’t get it. What do you mean by X?

2) Ah, I understand what you mean by X.

(3) I understand what you mean by X, but I don’t believe X is true.

(4) I accept your claim that X is true.

Emotional

1) Knowing X makes no difference to me.

(2) I have a bad feeling about X.

(3) I don’t feel I can leave up to X

(4) I have a good feel about X.

Volitional

(1) I’m not willing to attach value to X in my life-priorities.

(2) I’m willing, so far as I can, to attach value to X in my life-priorities.

(3) I’m prepared to prioritise X in my own life, but I don’t regard it as something everyone else should necessarily prioritise.

4) I’m prepared to prioritise X in my own life and, whenever appropriate, will commend its priority to others.

According to Hill, the cognitive plays a small role in the learning of values. The emotional dimension is more important and it is that dimension that influences the volitional in prioritizing its values. In the teaching of values, I agree with Hill that teachers have a tendency to use conditioning, coercion, indoctrination and persuasion as possible pedagogies.

Instead he suggests the following:

(1) I will model X in my own behaviour before students.

2) I will, where necessary for the common good, require students to behave in the classroom in a manner consistent with X.

(3) I will encourage maturing students to engage in critical examination of the grounds for and against prioritizing X in their lives.

4) I will represent to students that X, in my opinion, points to a defensible value by which to live, but I will respect and not penalize dissent.

Hill highlights that in the teaching of values, we need to be aware of the cognitive, emotional and volitional dimensions of learning. Our pedagogy must be based on these dimensions and should involve modeling, reflection and respect.

Reference:

Hill, Brian V., How Learners Respond to the Teaching of Beliefs and Values, Journal of Education and Christian Beliefs, 12:2 (2008) 101-113

Random Musings on Teaching In Higher Education (2)

Teaching Values in Higher Education

Recently I received an email about medicine with this equation

E² - evidence + experience = good medicine

I beg to differ from my learned colleague whom I respect very much. While the practice of medicine has improved with the introduction of evidence-based medicine, it is important to realize that evidence based-medicine is not the holy grail of medical standards. Even the highest level of meta-analysis has its limitation. It is just a statistical program which analyses data fed into it. It is important not to forget the old axiom: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Also not everything that is done in the practice of medicine is available in the evidence-based medicine databases.

Experience is a good teacher but repetition is not a proof of expertise or even of competence. A doctor may be repeating the same mistake repeatedly. However, not repeating mistakes and increased competence may be achieved by combining evidence with experience. I believe that there is still another component to the equation. This component is good character. Thus I will suggest that the equation should be

E²GC- evidence + experience + good character = good medicine

I believed that good medicine can only be practiced by a doctor with good character. I have seen surgeons who have excellent surgical skills who could not bother with whom they operated upon. “The operation was successful but the patient died” was their creed. I have seen doctors who treat their patients as objects- some problems to be solved and then move on. True care, concern and compassion can only come out of good character. Good characters are formed by good beliefs.

It is a fallacy in many institutions of higher learning that knowing will automatically lead to believing. For example, if we teach our students to be compassionate to their patients, they will automatically be compassionate because of their knowledge. Unfortunately this is not true.

Educator Emeritus Professor Brian Hill of Murdock University identifies in How Learners Respond to the Teaching of Beliefs and Values the three dimensions in how students respond to the teaching of values. These dimensions are the psychological dimensions of the cognitive, the emotional, and the volitional. While writing about teaching in schools, I believe his findings have implications in centers of higher learning. The possible response of a student to the teaching of a value X may be:

Cognitive

(1) I don’t get it. What do you mean by X?

2) Ah, I understand what you mean by X.

(3) I understand what you mean by X, but I don’t believe X is true.

(4) I accept your claim that X is true.

Emotional

1) Knowing X makes no difference to me.

(2) I have a bad feeling about X.

(3) I don’t feel I can leave up to X

(4) I have a good feel about X.

Volitional

(1) I’m not willing to attach value to X in my life-priorities.

(2) I’m willing, so far as I can, to attach value to X in my life-priorities.

(3) I’m prepared to prioritise X in my own life, but I don’t regard it as something everyone else should necessarily prioritise.

4) I’m prepared to prioritise X in my own life and, whenever appropriate, will commend its priority to others.

According to Hill, the cognitive plays a small role in the learning of values. The emotional dimension is more important and it is that dimension that influences the volitional in prioritizing its values. In the teaching of values, I agree with Hill that teachers have a tendency to use conditioning, coercion, indoctrination and persuasion as possible pedagogies.

Instead he suggests the following:

(1) I will model X in my own behaviour before students.

2) I will, where necessary for the common good, require students to behave in the classroom in a manner consistent with X.

(3) I will encourage maturing students to engage in critical examination of the grounds for and against prioritizing X in their lives.

4) I will represent to students that X, in my opinion, points to a defensible value by which to live, but I will respect and not penalize dissent.

Hill highlights that in the teaching of values, we need to be aware of the cognitive, emotional and volitional dimensions of learning. Our pedagogy must be based on these dimensions and should involve modeling, reflection and respect.

Reference:

Hill, Brian V., How Learners Respond to the Teaching of Beliefs and Values, Journal of Education and Christian Beliefs, 12:2 (2008) 101-113

Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell (2008), Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Harchette Book Group).

One of my observation is that most medical students who scored well in their assessment examinations during their long medical courses do not do well and become successful medical practitioners after they graduate. Of course, there are rare exceptions. Usually those who are average and sometimes borderline passes do well in their lives after graduation. I have often wondered about this.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink: the power of thinking with thinking and The Tipping Point: how little things can make a big difference offers some insights into this. Gladwell is an insightful author, looking behind the obvious to gives us a more obvious answer.

Outlier (noun) means:
(1) something that is situated from or classified from a main or related body, and
(2) a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.
In an average mean chart, an outlier will be a person who is either in the top or bottom 10% of the mean.

Gladwell tried to analyse the lives of successful men and women, those whom he calls 'outliers' to discover the secret of their successes. As in the previous books, he balanced his arguments with facts and anecdotes. His theses are both fascinating and obvious.

There is a limitation to what genetics can offer a person. For example, IQ. The higher the IQ a person has does not automatically translate to a more successful life. In fact, there is no advantage to being a success beyond a 120 IQ points.

Galdwell's theses has a lot to do with nurture. Given a person with average intelligence, these are the factors that will help make a person a success:

(1) Nurture
both in families and communities that produce an higher EQ. It is the high EQ that is a determining factor. The nurture of EQ seems to be better in higher income families and in families who are concerned to help their children grow.

(2) Opportunities
one example quoted is Bill Gates who in high school was given the opportunity to learn from the very best computer code writers and be allowed a job to write computer codes himself while as a high school student.

(3) Cultural legacies
such as the Asian culture of hard work ( Asian students tend to score well in Maths) which produce successful people and the hierarchical system in Asia which inhibits individual initiative and thus inhibits success (example the high rate of airplane crashes in Korean Air in the past).

It will be useful if Gladwell defines what he meant by success instead of mentioning men and women who "did things out of the ordinary" and launched into various biographies and autobiographies. My gleaming of what he meant by success is something very achievement-orientated, secular and individualistic. There is no spiritual or moral element in his definition of success. It will be useful to include these two elements into his group of 'outliers' and see how many still remains after this two criteria are added.

Another problem I have with this book is the way data from some researches are used. I find it hard to understanding how the hard work related to rice farming in China is linked to Asian children doing better in Maths. While it it true that rice farming demands hard work, it is a leap of faith to declare that the Chinese cultural legacies of hard work is related to the rice field and also to Asian children doing well in Maths. Another explanation offered in why Asia children do better in Maths is that numbers in English is longer that the same numbers in Mandarin. For example the pronunciation of the numbers: 7 in English is double syllable se-ven, while in Mandarin is monosyllable. Also English has more number names than Mandarin; English-eleven ,twelve, thirteen... while in Mandarin, Korean and Japanese, it is more logical- ten-one, ten-two, ten-three...

My impression is that Galdwell has formulated his theses first and then find studies to support them, i.e. he is working backwards. Thus he was very selective in his choice of literature. On the whole this is an interesting book to read. I am amazed at the varieties of studies Galdwell has dug up.

.

Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell (2008), Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Harchette Book Group).

One of my observation is that most medical students who scored well in their assessment examinations during their long medical courses do not do well and become successful medical practitioners after they graduate. Of course, there are rare exceptions. Usually those who are average and sometimes borderline passes do well in their lives after graduation. I have often wondered about this.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink: the power of thinking with thinking and The Tipping Point: how little things can make a big difference offers some insights into this. Gladwell is an insightful author, looking behind the obvious to gives us a more obvious answer.

Outlier (noun) means:
(1) something that is situated from or classified from a main or related body, and
(2) a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.
In an average mean chart, an outlier will be a person who is either in the top or bottom 10% of the mean.

Gladwell tried to analyse the lives of successful men and women, those whom he calls 'outliers' to discover the secret of their successes. As in the previous books, he balanced his arguments with facts and anecdotes. His theses are both fascinating and obvious.

There is a limitation to what genetics can offer a person. For example, IQ. The higher the IQ a person has does not automatically translate to a more successful life. In fact, there is no advantage to being a success beyond a 120 IQ points.

Galdwell's theses has a lot to do with nurture. Given a person with average intelligence, these are the factors that will help make a person a success:

(1) Nurture
both in families and communities that produce an higher EQ. It is the high EQ that is a determining factor. The nurture of EQ seems to be better in higher income families and in families who are concerned to help their children grow.

(2) Opportunities
one example quoted is Bill Gates who in high school was given the opportunity to learn from the very best computer code writers and be allowed a job to write computer codes himself while as a high school student.

(3) Cultural legacies
such as the Asian culture of hard work ( Asian students tend to score well in Maths) which produce successful people and the hierarchical system in Asia which inhibits individual initiative and thus inhibits success (example the high rate of airplane crashes in Korean Air in the past).

It will be useful if Gladwell defines what he meant by success instead of mentioning men and women who "did things out of the ordinary" and launched into various biographies and autobiographies. My gleaming of what he meant by success is something very achievement-orientated, secular and individualistic. There is no spiritual or moral element in his definition of success. It will be useful to include these two elements into his group of 'outliers' and see how many still remains after this two criteria are added.

Another problem I have with this book is the way data from some researches are used. I find it hard to understanding how the hard work related to rice farming in China is linked to Asian children doing better in Maths. While it it true that rice farming demands hard work, it is a leap of faith to declare that the Chinese cultural legacies of hard work is related to the rice field and also to Asian children doing well in Maths. Another explanation offered in why Asia children do better in Maths is that numbers in English is longer that the same numbers in Mandarin. For example the pronunciation of the numbers: 7 in English is double syllable se-ven, while in Mandarin is monosyllable. Also English has more number names than Mandarin; English-eleven ,twelve, thirteen... while in Mandarin, Korean and Japanese, it is more logical- ten-one, ten-two, ten-three...

My impression is that Galdwell has formulated his theses first and then find studies to support them, i.e. he is working backwards. Thus he was very selective in his choice of literature. On the whole this is an interesting book to read. I am amazed at the varieties of studies Galdwell has dug up.

.

Eight Thought Experiments

from WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.06

The Best Thought Experiments: Schrödinger's Cat, Borel's Monkeys
Greta Lorge 05.22.07

1. Galileo's balls
Contrary to what your teachers told you, Galileo Galilei likely did not drop balls from the Tower of Pisa; he conducted the gravity experiment in the laboratory of his mind. His 16th-century peers believed heavier objects fell faster than light ones. So Galileo imagined a heavy ball attached by a string to a light ball. Would the light ball create drag and slow the heavy one down? Nope, he concluded, they would hit the ground simultaneously.

2. Schrödinger's cat
A cat is trapped in a box with radioactive material, a Geiger counter, and a mechanism rigged to release poison if particle decay is detected. According to Erwin Schrödinger, the cat exists in two probable states. But that doesn't track with reality (cats are not both alive and dead). Proposed in 1935, the postulate illustrates that some quantum concepts just don't work at nonquantum scales. Also that Schrödinger was a dog person.

3. Searle's room
A man sits alone in a room. Someone slips paper with Chinese writing on it under the door. The man doesn't read Chinese, but with a set of instructions he's able to manipulate the symbols and respond. To an observer, the man appears to understand the language. Philosopher John Searle devised the scenario in 1980 to make a point about computers. CPUs, like his man, lack comprehension and thus can't have humanlike intelligence.

4. Hawking's turtles
The 1988 book A Brief History of Time begins with the story of a scientist giving a lecture on astronomy. At the conclusion of his talk, a woman insists he's wrong: Earth is a flat plate carried on the back of a giant turtle. The scientist asks what the turtle is standing on, and the woman says, "It's turtles all the way down!" Stephen Hawking used the story to caution fellow cosmologists against piling one unproven theory upon another.

5. Einstein's light beam
When he was 16, Albert Einstein daydreamed about chasing after a beam of light until he caught up to it. At that point, young Einstein reasoned, the light wave would appear frozen. The problem: This was impossible according to the thinking back in 1895. Somehow, this little glitch led Einstein right to the theory of special relativity. Lost? Don't worry. Physicists still debate exactly how this mental exercise got him there.

6. Borel's monkeys
Variations go back to Aristotle, but the modern version of the infinite-monkey theorem was introduced in 1913 by French mathematician Émile Borel. You know the deal: An infinite number of monkeys pecking at typewriters for an infinite length of time will "almost surely" produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Seems unlikely, because our minds have a hard time grasping the infinite. Mathematically, it's true.

7. Maxwell's demon
In 1867, James Clerk Maxwell pictured two chambers, A and B, each filled with gas at the same temperature and with a door between them. Theorists later had a demon open the door (without doing any work) to let the fastest-moving molecules pass from A into B, and the slowest from B to A. Over time, the speed of the atoms (and therefore the temperature) increases in B — a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

8. Parfit's teleporter
Philosopher Derek Parfit is famous for basing thought experiments on sci-fi. In 1984, he envisioned a teleporter malfunction, like the one that made two James T. Kirks in an episode of Star Trek. Teleporters annihilate every particle in you, then rebuild them from scratch. What happens if the original isn't destroyed? Which is the real you? Parfit says both. Evil Kirk would disagree.

read more

Illustration by Mark Matcho

Eight Thought Experiments

from WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.06

The Best Thought Experiments: Schrödinger's Cat, Borel's Monkeys
Greta Lorge 05.22.07

1. Galileo's balls
Contrary to what your teachers told you, Galileo Galilei likely did not drop balls from the Tower of Pisa; he conducted the gravity experiment in the laboratory of his mind. His 16th-century peers believed heavier objects fell faster than light ones. So Galileo imagined a heavy ball attached by a string to a light ball. Would the light ball create drag and slow the heavy one down? Nope, he concluded, they would hit the ground simultaneously.

2. Schrödinger's cat
A cat is trapped in a box with radioactive material, a Geiger counter, and a mechanism rigged to release poison if particle decay is detected. According to Erwin Schrödinger, the cat exists in two probable states. But that doesn't track with reality (cats are not both alive and dead). Proposed in 1935, the postulate illustrates that some quantum concepts just don't work at nonquantum scales. Also that Schrödinger was a dog person.

3. Searle's room
A man sits alone in a room. Someone slips paper with Chinese writing on it under the door. The man doesn't read Chinese, but with a set of instructions he's able to manipulate the symbols and respond. To an observer, the man appears to understand the language. Philosopher John Searle devised the scenario in 1980 to make a point about computers. CPUs, like his man, lack comprehension and thus can't have humanlike intelligence.

4. Hawking's turtles
The 1988 book A Brief History of Time begins with the story of a scientist giving a lecture on astronomy. At the conclusion of his talk, a woman insists he's wrong: Earth is a flat plate carried on the back of a giant turtle. The scientist asks what the turtle is standing on, and the woman says, "It's turtles all the way down!" Stephen Hawking used the story to caution fellow cosmologists against piling one unproven theory upon another.

5. Einstein's light beam
When he was 16, Albert Einstein daydreamed about chasing after a beam of light until he caught up to it. At that point, young Einstein reasoned, the light wave would appear frozen. The problem: This was impossible according to the thinking back in 1895. Somehow, this little glitch led Einstein right to the theory of special relativity. Lost? Don't worry. Physicists still debate exactly how this mental exercise got him there.

6. Borel's monkeys
Variations go back to Aristotle, but the modern version of the infinite-monkey theorem was introduced in 1913 by French mathematician Émile Borel. You know the deal: An infinite number of monkeys pecking at typewriters for an infinite length of time will "almost surely" produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Seems unlikely, because our minds have a hard time grasping the infinite. Mathematically, it's true.

7. Maxwell's demon
In 1867, James Clerk Maxwell pictured two chambers, A and B, each filled with gas at the same temperature and with a door between them. Theorists later had a demon open the door (without doing any work) to let the fastest-moving molecules pass from A into B, and the slowest from B to A. Over time, the speed of the atoms (and therefore the temperature) increases in B — a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

8. Parfit's teleporter
Philosopher Derek Parfit is famous for basing thought experiments on sci-fi. In 1984, he envisioned a teleporter malfunction, like the one that made two James T. Kirks in an episode of Star Trek. Teleporters annihilate every particle in you, then rebuild them from scratch. What happens if the original isn't destroyed? Which is the real you? Parfit says both. Evil Kirk would disagree.

read more

Illustration by Mark Matcho