a
personal context:
Many of the pages described
below are an extension of my PhD dissertation, which involved: (1) developing
a model of Integrated Scientific Method that
is a synthesis of ideas — mainly from scientists and philosophers,
but also from sociologists,
psychologists, historians, and myself — about scientific method, and
(2) using this model to analyze the instructional methods in a creative "science
inquiry" classroom. In a long process involving multiple revisions,
these ideas have been changed and rearranged, summarized and colorized,
and
extended from science into other areas of life. / This page ends
with a section about
the author and his pages on "miscellaneous topics" like
physics, music, and juggling!
an update:
Recently, especially since the beginning of 2011, my main project has been developing ideas about Design Process that are an extension of my PhD work. Here are three links, with the first being my most up-to-date and (I think) my best work on education:
Using Design Process for Problem Solving & Education
plus Ideas for Education and (including a portfolio with some of
my “influences” and some results) Working with Other Educators
Introductory
Pages
Three aspects of education (learning,
thinking, teaching) have introductory pages that summarize interesting, important
ideas:
For learning,
Motivations and Strategies for
Learning encourages you to ask "What can I learn now
that will help me in the future?", describes personally goal-directed
learning and motivational teamwork (between learners and teachers), and
explains how
(by learning from experience) a friend did learn to weld and how I didn't
learn to ski (by learning from mistakes) but I did learn to ski (how?); also,
why "steps
and leaps"
can be bad news or good news, the joy of ideas (it's fun to learn and think!),
and more.
For thinking,
An Introduction to Design
describes and illustrates a method (by comparing goals with the results
of mental and physical experiments) for designing a product, strategy, or
theory (for doing almost anything in life), explores the similarities and
differences between design and science, and explains why we should teach design
before science.
For teaching,
Aesop's Activities: A
Goal-Directed Approach to Education is a two-mode strategy
of defining educational goals (for ideas and
skills to be learned) that are worthy, and designing
instructional activities (to provide experience with ideas and skills,
and to help students learn more from their experience) that are effective
in achieving the goals, plus tips for creative instruction, activities for
reflection and evaluation, a tool for analyzing and improving the structure
of instruction, plus a "radical and practical" attitude for educational
reform.
In addition to these
intro-pages, what are other options? 1) the
table below shows 16 of my favorite pages, in four categories (design,
design-and-science, science, teaching) plus link-pages I've written as editor; 2) the
rest of this page has
brief descriptions of the pages in each category (learning, thinking, teaching)
with suggested readings in bold.
Thinking Skills in Education:
Design
Process and Scientific Method,
and Problem Solving in a Goal-Directed Curriculum
Recently, most pages in the first two table-rows below (all except
the "Scientific Method" pages and "Motivations" and "Four Frameworks...")
have been developed more fully, in revised-and-improved versions in a website about
Using Design Process for Problem Solving and Education. |
in this page, each link opens
a new page in its own new window, leaving this page open in this window
LEARNING
As explained in the home-page
for Learning Skills, motivations and strategies for learning (wanting
to learn, and knowing how to learn) are the foundations of education.
Everything else in the website is just the details.
So far, besides Motivations
and Strategies for Learning (described above),
only one of my pages has "learning" as its main theme: Study
Skills for Effective Learning describes strategies for improving
memory, concentration, reading and listening, exam preparation and
performance, and
use of time. { also, more study skills are in the ASA Science Ed Website
in the links-page
for LEARNING SKILLS }
THINKING
After reading An
Introduction to Design (described above)
you can explore any of the following topics. They are not in any kind
of sequential order, so you can begin with any topic that looks interesting
or useful.
Design
UPDATE — All of the pages in this "THINKING" section have been developed more fully, with major revisions, in a comprehensive website about Using Design Process in Problem Solving and Education.
A
Brief Overview of Design Method organizes designing activities
(what we think and do during the process of design, as described in An
Introduction to Design) into a model of Integrated
Design Method. These ideas are explored more deeply, and developed
more fully, in A Detailed
Overview of Design Method.
Science
You can begin with Scientific
Method: Using the Everyday Logic of Reality-Checks and then
move on to An
Overview of Scientific Method which outlines a nine-part model of
Integrated Scientific Method that describes
what we think and do during the process of science. These activities
are explored more deeply in A
Detailed Examination of Scientific Method, which is is a condensed version
of the first half of my PhD dissertation.
Design and Science
In An Introduction to Design,
design is described as a search for improved
products or strategies, using "quality checks" that compare goals
with predictions or observations, while science
is a search for theories about nature, using "reality checks" that
compare predictions with observations. What are the relationships
between design and science? Is science a specialized type of design? What are the similarities
and differences between science and engineering? between science and
other types of design? In some situations, scientists do engineering,
and engineers do science, so how should we define the fields of science and
engineering, and the careers of scientists and engineers?
Examples of Design
I.O.U. — Later, I'll write a page to illustrate the process and results of design with examples
from a wide range of life.
The Nature of Science
A page asking "Is
there a method?" answers YES by explaining how the methods used in
science (and design) are analogous to the "structured improvisation"
of a hockey skater, and how a flexible model can serve as a framework for
describing a wide range of views about the process and content of science.
Debates
about Science — Wild controversies and hot debates!
Are some views of science dangerous for students? Can too much of a
good thing be harmful? Do scientists seek the truth? Do they claim
proof? Do they create reality? How can we avoid running off (or
being carried away) to silly extremes? / And a supplementary page
— Tools for Analysis
— shows a way to logically analyze the cultural-personal
factors that influence science. }
Thinking Skills and Methods
The effective coordinating
of two essential skills (CREATIVITY and CRITICAL
THINKING) is the focus
of Productive Thinking {this
interesting could have been an intro-page} that
is used in PROBLEM
SOLVING METHODS.
An
Overview of Thinking Skills summarizes and compares four perspectives
(including Integrated Design Method) on how to understand, organize, and teach
thinking skills and methods.
TEACHING
The introductory page — Aesop's
Activities for Goal-Directed Education (described above) — contains
four important ideas that can serve as topics for continuing exploration:
Goals
Ideally, students and teachers will have similar educational
goals, as described in the "Motivational Teamwork" part of the intro-page
for learning (described above), which links to a "design
before science" motivational principle.
Reflection Activities
A reflective focus on "what can be learned" is
the main theme of Teaching Scientific Method in Science
Labs. Another page has examples of "thinking skills activities" from chemistry labs.
Although it's less obvious, reflection is also a major benefit
in teaching "methods
for problem solving" in design and science. { IOU — Later, the "reflection
on methods" idea, which is also a theme in the "wide spiral curriculum" section,
will be explained more clearly and emphasized more strongly. }
Active Learning is a links-page that will help you explore the pros and cons of various teaching methods, and the benefits
of eclectic variety — by including both direct and inquiry learning, since
both can be active — rather than using only one method; it challenges
narrow habits of thinking (which assume we should teach "either this
way or the other, but not both") that tend to restrict the ways we think
about methods of instruction.
Analysis of Instruction
This begins in Aesop's Activities and
continues in an outline of a wide-spiral
curriculum that would teach thinking skills using models (described above) for
Integrated Design Method and Integrated Scientific Method. The page with
the wide spiral curriculum (Problem Solving in Education)
explains my "optimistic humility" about the benefits of using these
models in education, and compares them with four other
perspectives on thinking skills.
Evaluation Activities
Although there is some discussion of lab-exam evaluations
(of students in discussion-based labs) and conceptual
evaluation (of instruction), evaluation is not a major theme in this website.
More resources are available in the ASA Science Ed
website, in the home-pages for TEACHING
METHODS and TEACHING
ACTIVITIES.
Miscellaneous
About
the Author — an academic and personal summary, with links
to my pages about stories & dancing & thinking skills education & ESL & worldviews
& origins
& a quick-education website & a lesson from high school & science in sports & science in arts and more.
Physics: Power Tools for Problem
Solving
Do-it-Yourself
Juggling — it's more fun to do it than to just watch! (or you can just watch my juggling video and see photos from it)
Musical
Improvisation and Music Theory — tips for making your own music.
with bottom-of-page links for two
pages about Making Bamboo Flutes
(with a 9-hole fingering system I invented) that were written by Marc
Bristol, using information from me, and were published in
Mother Earth News.
My PhD Dissertation
(and related pages) in five parts:
1) Earlier in this page I describe the personal
context of my dissertation and the newer web-pages
(about scientific method and design method) that are the result of
creative ideas being "changed and rearranged, summarized and colorized,
and extended from science into other areas of life." Developing a model of Integrated Scientific Method was the first part of my dissertation, and the second half was the Integrative Analysis of Inquiry you see below.
2) topical
outline — This may be a world record for the longest
Table of Contents for a doctoral dissertation! :<) And I'm among the rare scholars who juggled in their PhD defense in order to illustrate the benefits of analyzing a complex process — such as juggling, science, or education — by breaking it into smaller parts in an effort to cope with the complexity and to understand the complex process, in its parts and as a whole, more accurately and thoroughly. { I juggled with the permission of my open-minded advisor, Jim Stewart. I asked him “would this be OK?” so he asked ”why?” and after I explained he said “yes” in one of the many ways that he was an excellent advisor, for me and for many other students. }
3) references — for most of the dissertation-sources cited in this website.
4) EVERYTHING — You can download (in word-processing files) my entire dissertation, "A
Model of Integrated Scientific Method and its Application for the Analysis
of Instruction."
5) A
Brief History of ISM — a progression of diagrams for ISM and IDM
(Integrated Scientific Method and Integrated Design Method), from 1989 to
1997.
plus related pages:
Integrative Analysis
of Inquiry — describes an award-winning classroom, taught
by Sue Johnson, in which students play the role of research scientists
by using computer-simulated genetics experiments. There is also
an overview of an in-depth analysis (the second half of my dissertation)
in which
I used ISM as
a framework for the integrative analysis of instruction.
Terminology
(Coping with Confusion) — There is a lack of consistency in the
terms used to describe scientific method. Some terms have many meanings,
and some meanings are known by many names. This makes precise communication
difficult, but in ISM I have tried to be internally consistent and (to the
extent this is possible) also externally consistent with the more commonly
used terms and meanings.
Other Pages (available now)
Visual
Thinking — explores verbal-visual symbolism, logic, and imagination,
and the benefits of using various "visual representations of ideas"
during instruction.
Word
Problems — strategies for solving many type of problems, although
(more than in my more recent writing) the focus is partially — but not totally
— on the types of problems usually found in textbooks and on exams, which are sometimes (but not always) useful for helping you develop skill in coping with problems in real-life situations.
