I don’t often have time to listen to the radio during the afternoon, but today, I caught the last few minutes of “The start of social media’s legal reckoning” on 1A which I listened to on Vermont Public’s radio broadcast. I only caught the tail end of the commentary, but one of the guests made Read More
Category: Theory
Are You Being Scientific?
If you have read recent posts, you will know I have connected with a book written before I was born about the nature of science. In this final post, I continue to reflect on the fact that science depends on two types of knowledge, but that is often ignored in most descriptions of science. Nash Read More
On Multiple Working Hypotheses
180: On Multiple Working Hypotheses When I was an undergraduate student studying biology, a botany professor shared with us an article from Science magazine published in 1890. The paper was presented to the Society of Western Naturalists by its president T. C. Chamberlin. It was very influential to me in 1985, but during a move Read More
Teaching in the AI World: A Time for John Dewey
106: Teaching in the AI World: A Time for John Dewey I’ve been as educator for a long time. In the 1980’s, the folks who taught me how to do the work connected me with John Dewey. I have continued to read his work over my career and wondered what he would have thought of Read More
On Data Quality
Education demands data. This isn’t just about lively debate; it requires educators to act as educational researchers, asking clear questions, designing robust data collection methods, and analyzing findings to draw reasonable conclusions. At the heart of this process lies the critical twin pillars of ethical data gathering and rigorous data validation. Only through these can Read More
Science and Pseudoscience
We often hear claims about what is or isn’t “scientific.” Science holds a distinctive place in modern society; we trust its pronouncements on everything from building bridges to who counts as an expert. Yet, history is full of scientific theories that turned out to be wrong. This leads us to a fundamental question: what exactly Read More
Theory and Practice in Education
46: Bridging the Gap: Educational Theory and Practice Education is one of several soft technologies that share an interesting trait: The scholars who discover the science behind the natural phenomena that are the basis of the technology and the practitioners who apply that science to the human purpose are different people. Other examples of human Read More
Elevator Pitch on Zone of Proxial Development
Like all Vygotskian ideas, the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a complex theory, but it can be reduced to a few simple principles that are quite easy to understand. First, within any domain of human knowledge, there are problems that an individual can solve easily and there are others that are too complex to Read More
An Example of Data
Data can become evidence only if it is reliable. Reliability is based on the degree to which the same observations can be made under similar circumstances but at different times, and also one the degree to which different measures of the same effect agree. Theory allows managers and leaders to make predictions about what they Read More
Tacit Knoweldge
Philosopher and scientist Michael Polanyi used the term tacit knowledge to describe understanding that is implicit and difficult to state with precision. For this reason, tacit knowledge cannot be stated as an algorithm, so it cannot be downloaded to digital devices. According to Polanyi, tacit knowledge is necessary to frame a problem, to develop a Read More