2011年6月21日 星期二

R&D Ruminations / Math Pathways blogs (the Carnegie Foundation)

R&D Ruminations blog

Announcing the R&D Ruminations blog

The Carnegie Foundation has launched a new blog — R&D Ruminations — to provide information and news about educational research and development tied closely to the Carnegie Foundation’s work in improvement research.

The latest post, Learning by Doing: Building a Networked Improvement Community, drawn from a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, emphasizes the Foundation’s commitment to an approach to educational research and development that joins practitioners, researchers and developers in purposeful collective action to address a problem of practice.

As a subscriber to the Improvement Research mailing list, you will automatically be notified whenever there is a new post to the blog. If you would prefer to not receive these occasional emails, you can modify your subscription preferences by clicking on "Update your Profile" at the bottom of any email from us.

We hope you enjoy this new resource and thank you for your continued interest in our work.

The blog address is: rd.carnegiefoundation.org


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Math Pathways blog

Announcing the Math Pathways blog

The Carnegie Foundation has launched a new blog —Math Pathways — to highlight our work in promoting student success in developmental education in community colleges.

The blog is managed by Gay Clyburn at Carnegie and Julie Phelps (Valencia College) and will include updates on our Statway™ and Quantway™ initatives, links to publications and articles that inform the work, and insights into what Carnegie is learning.

The latest post, “A Brief History of the Quantitative Literacy Movement: Arithmetic and Algebra Skills Aren’t Enough Any More,” is by Amy Getz of the Charles A. Dana Center, a partner in this work, and Rikki Blair, AMATYC past president and AMATYC Foundation Chair Professor Emeritus, who is also working with Carnegie.

As a subscriber to the Math Pathways mailing list, you will automatically be notified whenever there is a new post to the blog. If you would prefer to not receive these occasional emails, you can modify your subscription preferences by clicking on "Update your Profile" at the bottom of any email from us.

We hope you enjoy this new resource and thank you for your continued interest in our work.

The blog address is: pathways.carnegiefoundation.org


2011年6月20日 星期一

Living With Mistakes

David Brooks writes in The New York Times about Tim Harford’s new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure: Harford’s basic lesson is you have to design your life to make effective use of failures. You have to design systems of trial and error, or to use a natural word, evolution. Most successful enterprises are built through a process of groping and adaptation, not planning. The Russian thinker Peter Palchinsky understood the basic structure of smart change. First seek out new ideas and new things. Next, try new things on a scale small enough so that their failure is survivable. Then find a feedback mechanism so you can tell which new thing is failing and which is succeeding. That’s the model—variation, survivability, selection.


June 13, 2011, 12:01 pm

Living With Mistakes

Some of the blogs I follow—Marginal Revolution, Ezra Klein—have given ample attention to Tim Harford’s new book, “Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure.” So I solipsistically assumed that everybody must be aware of it. But then I happened to glance at this book’s Amazon ranking, which as I write is down on the wrong side of 1,500. This is an outrage, people! For the good of the world, a bigger slice of humanity should be aware of its contents.

So I’m doing my bit to publicize it. (I don’t know Harford in any way, shape or form.)

Harford starts out with the premise that the world is a very complicated and difficult place. At the dawn of the automobile industry roughly 2,000 car companies sprang into being. Less than 1 percent of them survived. Even if you make it to the top, it is very hard to stay there. The historian Leslie Hannah identified the ten largest American companies in 1912. None of those companies ranked in the top 100 companies by 1990.

Harford’s basic lesson is you have to design your life to make effective use of failures. You have to design systems of trial and error, or to use a natural word, evolution. Most successful enterprises are built through a process of groping and adaptation, not planning.

The Russian thinker Peter Palchinsky understood the basic structure of smart change. First seek out new ideas and new things. Next, try new things on a scale small enough so that their failure is survivable. Then find a feedback mechanism so you can tell which new thing is failing and which is succeeding.

That’s the model—variation, survivability, selection.

Harford then illustrates how this basic process can work across a variety of contexts, from business to war to poetry. He’s an able guide to the world of human fallibility. For example, he cites James Reason who identifies three kinds of error. First, there are slips. In 2005 a young Japanese trader meant to sell one share of stock at 600,000 yen but accidentally sold 600,000 shares at 1 yen.

Then there are violations, when someone intentionally breaks the rules. This is what Bernie Madoff did. Then there are mistakes—things you do on purpose but with unintentional consequences.

Errors can be very hard for outsiders to detect. A study by Alexander Dyck, Adair Morse and Luigi Zingales looked at 216 allegations of corporate fraud. Regulators and auditors uncovered the fraud in only one out of six of those cases. It was people inside the companies who were most likely to report fraud, because they have local knowledge. And yet 80 percent of these whistleblowers regret having reported the crimes because of the negative consequences they suffered. This is not the way to treat people who detect error.

Harford is an economic journalist, so he doesn’t get into the psychological and spiritual traits you need to live with error and look it in the face, but he offers a very useful guide for people preparing to live in the world as it really is.

東海哀歌 (3)

前文說許老師的室友李祖原 和校長吳德耀
我還特別指台大"新月臺"對面的真理堂的超大型霓虹十字架
他同意我的看法: 這太招遙了 身為教友 (長老會)的他 同意十字架是謙卑的
他說當助教時 東海的路思義教堂正大興土木 (他和李爬過多高的鷹架....)
他們在學時 做禮拜是在"體育館" 做完禮拜十字架就撤離
平常很少見到十字架 反而更寶貴
(謙卑的建築物之一是東海隔路的小天主堂 -- 2009年我為了演講台中港路 重走一趟
發現40年來唯一未變的是它......)

當然我也與許老師說新體育館募款失敗案 (校長說過 想去找張忠謀 人家都不見)....
想起 "北大有胡適之 清華有體育館" (當然 新竹的發生過漏電意外.....)
東海沒大師 (有一次許老師到中國醫藥大學演講 前教育部長說 現在 東海只剩下.......)
也沒(新)體育館....

2011年6月15日 星期三

通信錄

教育界的(SCI收錄)質與量的迷思:中國 與台灣 2005/2011

***
忠信兄來訪 談他上周六訪問許達然老師和東海校園的感想
他對全體空間規劃自有其想法 我說應該寫出來讓後人參考
他也慨嘆台灣現在已沒有人有聚合力搞類似牟宗三的人文講習會
以前(30)他們影印一些英文版哲學著作

陳省身文選: (他說這種書網路上都有) 幾年前 陳先生在南開過世 他不會料到台灣海峽是"一邊一國"....當然 可能只有數學無國界....


****

最近數月,我與中原大學還是相當有緣。除了王老師在圖書館舉辦的畫展在招呼台北人到中壢來,更妙的是,我在查羅家倫先生的《交響樂的震盪》(台北:雲天,1971),貴校竟然有館藏。對我,這次的小交會是有特別意義的。當然,上個禮拜三臨時敲定的這場聚會,更是精彩,所以我必須帶些禮物來。

---

1975年我從東海修了160學分(這學校的校友服務單位似想將我除名為快 很不幸 這樣還是改變不了衰弱之勢)…..不過, 專業的修習,卻是在數年後的各公司。譬如說,台灣飛利浦的工業工程,日本AMP 的工程/模具…..

2011年6月14日 星期二

教育界的(SCI收錄)質與量的迷思:中國 與台灣


上海交大的系統是3流
台灣教育部的 不入流


****沒這樣嚴重啦 老師

2011年6月8日星期三

彭明輝 我跟台大文學院副院長黃慕萱無冤無仇,但是這一篇悼文卻必須從這個名字開始。她替高等教育評鑑中心執行一項計畫,產出「全球五百大」排名,並發表了「2010世界大學科研論文質量評比」,號稱遠比既有各種評鑑方法更客觀。她自稱其方法是「以學術生產力、學術影響力、學術卓越性」三大方向作為評估構面,衡量的指標則是僅以SCI (Science Citation Index)與SSCI(Social Science Citation Index)之期刊論文為評比依據,以「近十一年論文數」、「當年論文數」、「近十一年論文被引次數」及「近二年論文被引次數」作為量化指標,也以各校全職教師數進行正規化處理。http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/zh-tw/2010/TOP/100

絲毫不令人訝異地,在這一份全球排行榜中,美國大學大獲全勝,而歐洲大學排行榜中英國獨領風騷。這個方法完全沒有考慮到一個最簡單的問題:法國人文社會領域最重要的研究成果當然是以法文發表,為何這份評量卻完全只採納英文期刊的論文?而這種粗暴的排行依據又將會對結果產生多荒謬的影響?

以歐美六O年代以後最具全球性影響力的人文與社會思潮為例,七O、八O年代最有影響力的法蘭克福學派是用德文書寫,20世紀末最具影響力的後現在文化批判則是用法文書寫。只採納英文期刊作為評鑑的依據,結果當然是思想源頭的法國與德國「學術表現低劣」,反而專事翻譯法、德著作的思想進口國(英、美)成為引領世界風潮的「學術頂尖」。

這麼荒謬的評鑑結果,這麼不嚴謹的評鑑方法,卻即將成為全台學術評鑑之軌範。我們不得不訝異於台大學者與教育部無知的程度,簡直已經讓人瞠目結舌!台大與教育部到底要鬧多少全球級笑話,立法院、監察院與大法官釋憲會議才願意出面遏止這些荒唐行徑?

台灣有她自己獨特的問題,這份研究與排名讓不懂學術的高教司有更充分的理由(台大教授加持)從事迫害學術的工作,剝奪學術的自由,踐踏學術的良知。對何謂「學術」略有所知的台灣學者,都應該一起到教育部與台大校門前,著黑衣來共同哀悼台灣的「學術之死」!
--

黃國超

靜宜大學台灣文學系


***2005

中國正在成為晶體生長大國

  啄木鳥

  中國正在成為晶體生長大國,這一點我並不吹噓。武漢科技學院朱海亮教授

2003年被SCI收錄論文65篇獲獎勵50多萬元,他的研究方向就是晶體合成與表徵。另外其他的高校也紛紛爆出冷門,國內某大學的一個教授把晶體的合成按研究方向分成6個小組,結果2004年合成晶體一百多顆,發表論文96篇(SCI收錄),堪稱2004年度“中國之最”,此外還有中山大學的陳小明、童明良等科學家……

  用一位行內教師的話說,一顆晶體就是一篇SCI收錄的論文。而SCI收錄論文的數量在當今又是衡量一個研究機構、大學、教師科研實力的重要參考資料。

我有一種感覺:中國的科研似乎被人牽著鼻子走。2001年中國科學院院士方

守賢認為“SCI作為惟一標準會導致功利性走向”:如果僅僅用SCI引錄的論文數量的多少作為科研成果評估的惟一標準,還很可能導致一些研究者專門選容易被SCI收錄的論文課題去研究的功利性走向。甚至有個別作者,將同一項成果以各種名義和形式反復發表,以增加被SCI收錄的機會,進行“高產”的SCI炒作,這已引起了某些科學刊物編輯部的不滿,影響了我國科學家的形象。

  一個人一年之內合成十幾顆晶體已經不足為怪,就合成、表徵晶體發表的論

文被SCI收錄,要比做一個大的科研專案、耗時幾年的工程發表SCI論文要快得多,容易的多。可想而知,為了SCI的論文數量,很多人要選擇做晶體。正如方守賢院士所料:每一小規模的課題較容易出成果。複雜的科研工程,規模龐大,投資昂貴(達幾十億到幾百億元),參與地人多(有幾百人、甚至上千人的梯隊參加),時間長(需要花5年或更長的時間),最後作為研究成果發表的文章篇數卻不多,這樣不利於我國基礎性科研的成長。

  2002年2月14日出版的《自然》雜誌 第732頁,《自然》雜誌非常及時地撰文指出SCI引文統計資料中存在的錯誤,並提醒人們在研究評價中謹慎使用SCI。

目前SCI對非英語國家期刊和論文的引證統計差錯更為嚴重,從而無意識地導致

了這些國家許多質量不錯的期刊面臨嚴重的生存和發展問題。中國較知名的

Chinese Science Bulletin》,SCI統計其1996年論文在1998年被引用147次,但我們發現有91次是錯引,在提醒謹慎使用SCI資料的同時,中國的科學家在呼籲要重視非英語國家的科技期刊的統計工作。

  當年為珍寶島戰爭計算出穿甲彈方程的劉先志發表了多少SCI、EI的論文?

SCI能不能打退蘇軍的鋼甲坦克?1953年,劉先志在瑞士的《應用數學和物理》

雜誌發表《關於連通管內理想流體自振的部分理解》的論文,引起國際學術界的

廣泛關注。德國的國際著名力學家舒勒(M. Schuler)在來信中寫道:“這篇論

文是有價值的,它比牛頓當年推出的一類似公式更為一般。”舒勒特別將論文的

30份複印本,分別發給德國30個研究中心。

  現在在介紹一位學術界人士的時候,動輒以“發表論文×××篇,其中被

SCI收錄××篇”的字眼,均以SCI來點綴頭銜。

  一位院士做客央視,面對白岩松:我們的科研是沒有希望的科研!

  許多國家自然基金的研究項目,最後往往都是以SCI論文來劃上句號。而另

一方面,我們國家所急需的藥物中間體等關係國計民生的重要的化工原料又要從

國外大量進口。這樣高額的開支最終都由國家和百姓來買單。我們總是劍走偏鋒!

  我們目前只注重SCI論文的數量,卻忽略了它的質量。有些論文的影響因數

很小,僅在0.3~0.5左右;有些SCI論文被收錄以後,很少有人去引用,“為了論文而論文”,最終學者們“視論文為垃圾”。

  我們做一個假設:某人在國內一級期刊上發表論文一篇,一年內被人引用5

次;另外一人在二級期刊上發表論文一篇,一年內被人引用50次。哪一篇論文更有價值?當然不可否認,那篇一級期刊的論文將來未必就沒有價值。

  早在5年前,就有專家指出我國的論文數量多而引用率低的現象。這與我們

現行的學術評估制度有關,與各單位的獎勵制度有關。現在的突出問題是,一味

地傾向SCI論文的數量,會影響我們科研經費的分配走向,會制約我們對應用技

術研究專案的扶持。造成國內許多與國家發展息息相關的研究課題“營養不良”

“胎死腹中”,最終造成在科技成果利用方面對發達國家的長期依賴。

(XYS20050130)

◇◇新語絲(www.xys.org)(xys.dxiong.com)(xys.3322.org)(xys.freedns.us)◇◇

January 30, 2005

2011年6月13日 星期一

蘋論:大學教師不可齊頭加薪

蘋論:大學教師不可齊頭加薪

前天一則新聞顯示,大學老師薪資加退休俸的總額,比小學老師薪資加退休的總和少,原因是大學老師因攻讀博士學位耗費多年,進入職場遠比小學老師晚,所以即使月薪高於小學老師,但一生收入總數較少。
教育部立即表示算法錯誤。無論算法對不對,社會普遍認為台灣的大學教授薪資低,所以優良的教授很容易就被其他國家高薪挖角,呼籲給大學老師們加薪。
台灣的大學太多,如果公立大學老師加薪,私立大學呢?很多私大收到的學生很少,每年虧損累累,哪還有錢加薪?如果教育部也按公立大學的標準給私校老師加薪,這一大筆錢是誰埋單?不用問當然是我們納稅人埋單。可是誰又給我們加薪呢?這符合社會正義嗎?對納稅人公平嗎?

問題出在長久以來政府的社會主義大鍋飯意識。大學教授要加薪就一視同仁地加,研究與教學表現優異的加,表現很爛的也加,而且加的比率完全一樣。這種齊頭式平等不但沒有獎懲的功能,也加重了納稅人及政府預算的負擔,因為要加薪的人數太龐大了。
如果向歐美大學學習,給表現優異的老師額外的講座金、研究基金、加薪等,學校的財力負擔就不會受影響。
其實,美國大學給平庸的教師和剛進入大學任教的新科博士的薪資很低,低到難以想像。要一直不斷寫論文、出版學術著作、參加學術研討會並提交傑出的研究報告,才勉強有機會升等加薪;等拿到終身聘書時,基金、獎金、講座等才會錦上添花而來;一直到在某個專業成為名教授,像是諾貝爾獎得主,那時才會有高額的薪資和總收入。

優秀學者才加薪

台灣要留住優異的學者並不難,在每個學科中找出前二、三名的學者,慷慨地給他們加薪,再由民間捐助的基金、講座另給經費,他們還可向國科會申請研究補助,總收入就相當可觀。這比齊頭式大家都加薪好得多,既可獎勵研究,懲罰懶惰教師,又可節省經費。
但若學者出任官員,則取消一切獎勵與薪資,例如布里辛斯基離開白宮後回哥倫比亞大學任教,因太忙不久就遭學生抗議,學校把他解聘。所以我們很贊成給優秀的學者加薪,但堅決反對給所有的大學老師一起加薪,不能讓政府做好人,慷納稅人之慨。

牛津大學的科技人悲哀

(他在節目上說 很難與英國(女)同學聊天 因為她們喜歡談/讀小說 ......所以他只好夜間去做實驗.....)


這位仁兄陳耀寬 在電視節目上竟然將Trinity說成什麼身心靈 也許是我沒聽過的神學

英國牛津大學無機化學博士(1997)/ 英國牛津大學無機化學博士獎學金(1993~1996)/ 英國牛津大學三一學院博士研究獎學金(1994和1996)

Trinity, Holy :三位一體;天主聖三:即聖父、聖子、聖神(靈)。唯一的天主,卻有三位。天主聖三奧跡包括愛的給予〔陽〕、愛的接受〔陰〕、愛的合一〔合〕。又稱 Blessed Trinity

kindergarten

Room for Debate: Who’s Ready for Kindergarten?
Room for Debate: Who’s Ready for Kindergarten?


The Berlin kindergarten where culture is king

A new kindergarten in Berlin is providing a daily dose of culture for its kiddies.

The idea behind this so-called culture kindergarten is to broaden horizons at an early age. It was set up by Germany’s Dussmann Group which is one of the country’s largest service providers. Hardy Graupner has the details from the suburb of Marzahn.


The Berlin kindergarten where culture is king

A new kindergarten in Berlin is providing a daily dose of culture for its kiddies.

2011年6月7日 星期二

Brain Calisthenics for Abstract Ideas

calisthenics

n. pl. - 柔軟體操, 運動
n. - 柔軟體操, 運動

Brain Calisthenics for Abstract Ideas

Like any other high school junior, Wynn Haimer has a few holes in his academic game. Graphs and equations, for instance: He gets the idea, fine — one is a linear representation of the other — but making those conversions is often a headache.

Or at least it was. For about a month now, Wynn, 17, has been practicing at home using an unusual online program that prompts him to match graphs to equations, dozens upon dozens of them, and fast, often before he has time to work out the correct answer. An equation appears on the screen, and below it three graphs (or vice versa, a graph with three equations). He clicks on one and the screen flashes to tell him whether he’s right or wrong and jumps to the next problem.

“I’m much better at it,” he said, in a phone interview from his school, New Roads in Santa Monica, Calif. “In the beginning it was difficult, having to work so quickly; but you sort of get used to it, and in the end it’s more intuitive. It becomes more effortless.”

For years school curriculums have emphasized top-down instruction, especially for topics like math and science. Learn the rules first — the theorems, the order of operations, Newton’s laws — then make a run at the problem list at the end of the chapter. Yet recent research has found that true experts have something at least as valuable as a mastery of the rules: gut instinct, an instantaneous grasp of the type of problem they’re up against. Like the ballplayer who can “read” pitches early, or the chess master who “sees” the best move, they’ve developed a great eye.

Now, a small group of cognitive scientists is arguing that schools and students could take far more advantage of this same bottom-up ability, called perceptual learning. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine, after all, and when focused properly, it can quickly deepen a person’s grasp of a principle, new studies suggest. Better yet, perceptual knowledge builds automatically: There’s no reason someone with a good eye for fashion or wordplay cannot develop an intuition for classifying rocks or mammals or algebraic equations, given a little interest or motivation.

“When facing problems in real-life situations, the first question is always, ‘What am I looking at? What kind of problem is this?’ ” said Philip J. Kellman, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Any theory of how we learn presupposes perceptual knowledge — that we know which facts are relevant, that we know what to look for.”

The challenge for education, Dr. Kellman added, “is what do we need to do to make this happen efficiently?”

Scientists have long known that the brain registers subtle patterns subconsciously, well before a person knows he or she is learning. In a landmark 1997 experiment, researchers at the University of Iowa found that people playing a simple gambling game with decks of cards reported “liking” some decks better than others long before they realized that those decks had cards that caused greater losses.. Some participants picked up the differences among decks after just 10 cards.

Experts develop such sensitive perceptual radar the old-fashioned way, of course, through years of study and practice. Yet there is growing evidence that a certain kind of training — visual, fast-paced, often focused on classifying problems rather then solving them — can build intuition quickly. In one recent experiment, for example, researchers found that people were better able to distinguish the painting styles of 12 unfamiliar artists after viewing mixed collections of works from all 12 than after viewing a dozen works from one artist, then moving on to the next painter. The participants’ brains began to pick up on differences before they could fully articulate them.

“Once the brain has a goal in mind, it tunes the perceptual system to search the environment” for relevant clues, said Steven Sloman, a cognitive scientist at Brown University. In time the eyes, ears and nose learn to isolate those signs and dismiss irrelevant information, in turn sharpening thinking.

Good teachers at all levels already have their own techniques to speed up this process — multiplication flash cards, tips to break down word problems, heuristic rhymes — but scientists are working to tune students’ eyes more systematically and to build understanding of very abstract concepts.

Fractions, for one. Most American middle school students, though they understand what fractions represent, don’t do so well when tested on their ability to change one fraction, like 4/3, to another, like 7/3, by adding or subtracting (many high school students bomb these tests, too).
Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times

PHYSICS IN ACTION From left, Christopher Allen, Andrea Leal and Gabe Boros conduct an experiment at New Roads. Gabe said he uses "tricks" to eliminate wrong answers.

Perceptual Learning

How does a student learn from gut insinct? Try these samples to find out.


Basic Math

Measurements and Graphing: Match the equation to the graph and learn to perceive basic measurement concepts.


Positive and Negative Feeback

Extreme Ball: Time a fan to blow and push a ball attached to rubber bands.

Extreme Population: Help your city reach a population of one million citizens.

Stabilize Ball: Time a fan to blow and stabilize a ball attached to rubber bands.

Stabilize Population: Help your city's population stabilize at 500,000 citizens.

In a 2010 study, researchers at UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania had sixth graders in a Philadelphia public school use a perception-training program to practice just this On the computer module, a fraction appeared as a block. The students used a “slicer” to cut that block into fractions and a “cloner” to copy those slices. They used these pieces to build a new block from the original one — for example, cutting a block that represented the fraction 4/3 into four equal slices, then making three more copies to produce a block that represented 7/3. The program immediately displayed an ‘X’ next to wrong answers and “Correct!” next to correct ones, then moved to the next problem. It automatically adjusted to each student’s ability, advancing slowly for some and quickly for others. The students worked with the modules individually, for 15- to 30-minute intervals during the spring term, until they could perform most of the fraction exercises correctly.

In a test on the skills given afterward, on problems the students hadn’t seen before, the group got 73 percent correct. A comparison group of seventh graders, who’d been taught how to solve such problems as part of regular classes, scored just 25 percent on the test.

“The impressive thing for me was that we went back five months later, after the summer, and the gains had held up,” said Christine Massey, director of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science and a study co-author. When the younger students returned as seventh graders in the fall, they scored just as high as they had the previous spring on tests of fractions that they had not seen. Knowing what a fraction represents is one thing, the authors say, but repeatedly seeing and manipulating all those fractions by slicing and cloning drives the concept home once and for all.

The research team found similar results in high school sophomores who practiced with the software that Wynn Haimer used, working to match algebraic equations with graphs.

“I find that often students will try to solve problems by doing only what they’ve been told to do, and if that doesn’t work they give up,” said Joe Wise, a physics instructor at New Roads School, where the study was done. “Here they’re forced to try what makes sense to them and to keep trying. The brain is very good at sorting out patterns if you give it the chance and the right feedback.”

The modules are less demanding than problem sets, but they’re not video games — they’re homework. “To be honest, I’ve got so much to wrap up this year that I haven’t really used the program much,” said Gabe Boros, one of Mr. Wise’s students. “I did try it a couple of times and improved a little, but often I have to guess or use tricks to eliminate the wrong answers.”

Which is the whole idea: Subtle shortcuts are the very stuff of perceptual intuition. With practice, neurons in the visual cortex and elsewhere specialize to identify these signature patterns, and finding them frees up mental resources for deductive reasoning, to check answers or to move on to harder problems. Such perceptual intuition isn’t cheating — it’s what the big-shot experts do. In the case of graphs and equations, it includes making quick judgments about where lines should intercept the axes and about their slope, even when that is not at all obvious.

On the surface at least, this may sound like the approaches that SAT or LSAT prep courses take, using time-saving strategies and informed guessing. But there is a difference, researchers say. The prep courses teach to the test, but perceptual training tools are aimed at the underlying skills — manipulating fractions, graphing equations. “It’s not how well you do, but how well you learn,” as Mr. Wise put it.

Ideally, perceptual training does more than breathe life into abstract principles, the same way that repairing engines instills a lived experience of internal combustion mechanics. It also primes students to apply the principles in other contexts. This ability to transfer, as it’s known, is fundamental to scientific reasoning and is among the highest goals of teachers at all levels.

Here, too, perceptual learning may help. In a series of experiments, researchers at Indiana University have had students practice on software that models scientific principles, like positive feedback loops. In one, middle school students use a mouse to add “slime mold” to a slide and watch as it spreads faster the more they add. The process fuels itself.

“The kids who have seen this situation will transfer it to other positive feedback loops, like global warming,” said Rob Goldstone, director of the cognitive science program at Indiana University. “The more ice that melts, the more heat that’s absorbed into the earth, the warmer it gets, which melts more ice, and so on.”

“Once they have the concept, I can refer back to it,” said Nancy Martin, a science teacher at Jackson Creek Middle School in Bloomington, Ind., who has worked with Dr. Goldstone. “I can say, ‘Remember how the ants worked, or the slime; does that have anything to do with what we’re discussing today?’ ”

In an education system awash with computerized learning tools and pilot programs of all kinds, the future of such perceptual learning efforts is far from certain. Scientists still don’t know the best way to train perceptual intuition, or which specific principles it’s best suited for. And such tools, if they are incorporated into curriculums in any real way, will be subject to the judgment of teachers.

But researchers are convinced that if millions of children can develop a trained eye for video combat games and doctored Facebook photos, they can surely do the same for graphs and equations.




2011年6月1日 星期三

FREE WEBINAR; Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession

FREE WEBINAR
Carnegie Calls for Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education




Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession

Please join us for a one hour discussion online with panelists:
  • Anne Colby, Consulting Professor at Stanford University, former Senior Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
  • William M. Sullivan, Senior Scholar at the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, Wabash College, former Senior Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Business is the most popular undergraduate major in U.S. higher education. The panelists argue that business education can be strengthened by supporting key elements of liberal learning integrated with business disciplines. They believe that this integration will help students acquire tools for advancing their business careers and also help students understand the place of business in larger institutional contexts, think creatively, and develop wise, ethically grounded professional judgment.

During the broadcast, the presenters will:

  • Articulate their conception of liberal learning
  • Explain why liberal learning is essential for a comprehensive business education
  • Provide examples of effective curricula that integrate liberal and business learning
  • Outline recommendations that will help business students move beyond technical expertise to deeper and more creative understanding of their chosen field, the broader world in which it operates, and the significance of these for their own life choices and directions

This webinar draws from a new Carnegie/Jossey-Bass book, Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession, by Colby, Sullivan, Thomas Ehrlich and Jonathan R. Dolle with a foreword by Lee S. Shulman.

Space is limited, so REGISTER NOW!