I’ve been tagged by Clif Mims to participate in the Eight Things You Didn’t Know About Me meme that’s been wending its way thru the blogosphere..

THE RULES

1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose/tag 8 people and list their names, linking to them.
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged.

EIGHT RANDOM FACTS ABOUT ME

1. I know how to mend net - and I use my feet.
2. I used to spend my summers working in a factory - until I became old enough to get legal work
3. I hate weeding — gardens, collections, file structures …
4. I love reading books and spend most of my spare time with a paperback
5. I don’t believe in protecting children at any cost. Prison is the ultimate protection and I don’t advocate locking up kids — or their minds. Ever
6. I’m a coffee snob. I don’t like Starbucks coffee because they have only one roast — too dark — and their blends are pathetic. But I drink it anyway.
7. I have too many blogs. Some don’t have my name on them. No, I won’t tell you what they are.
8. I write science fiction novels and publish them as audiobooks at http://podiobooks.com

THE MEME TRACE STOPS HERE

These memes are sometimes interesting, often cute, but I don’t know 8 people who blog that Clif hasn’t tagged already.

Posted in Observations | 1 Comment »

Recently, I’ve been struggling with the notion of education and research. What would an educational research lab LOOK like? What would it do? How would it be funded? I keep coming back to a CSI or NorBAC lab model. Yes, I know those are TV model labs, but still and all. What would it look like to have a lab that studied teaching and learning?

The problem seems to me that Education isn’t science.

Psychology, that’s a science. I’m ok with that. Microbiology, sure. No problem. Physiology, ok, sure.

But it seems to me that all our Educational “science” is lacking a bit on rigor. Yes, we have Bloom’s taxonomy, and Gagne’s nine steps, and there are theories and paradigms abounding, but is it science?

My problem is basically, the notion that science is predictive. I mean, that’s the whole point of science, isn’t it? To explain and predict? And if that’s the case then we seem to be a bit short in the Educaiton arena because the same “intervention” which works stunningly with one student completely misses the mark on another. Sure, I did something that looked like science in my dissertation research that looked at what factors contribute to how people perceive distance, but that’s hardly on the same level of rigor as … say … DNA sequencing.

Now before I get a lot of people hyperventilating, I’m not sure that not being a science isn’t a good thing. One of the difficulties is dealing with the definitions. Education is the business of providing instruction. We tend to confound the term Education with Teaching, and I’ve purposely used that fact in this post so far. What I really mean to say is “Teaching Isn’t Science.” Of course, Education isn’t science! It’s business.

So, with that cleared up, we’re still left with the question about the labs. What would the specialties be? What skills?

A statistician, certainly and for obvious reason.

An educational psychologist? I think so. Emphasis on assessment, probably.

How about a brain physiologist?

What about an instructional designer? I’m not sure on this one.

But that begs the question, doesn’t it? Not about the personnel, but should there even be a lab? Forensics labs investigate evidence from crime scenes. Bio-research labs examine a variety of established problems. Are there parallel “problems” in Teaching? Could we do basic research into the relationships between teaching and learning? And how do we get those findings into the schools?

I don’t know. I’m feeling very unsettled about this.

Posted in Education | 1 Comment »