My question is about how education and research inter-relate, and where the border is between them. Research is about questioning, theorising, seeking to explain, deconstructing other explanations and generally getting under the skin of a problem. My experience of undergraduate education (29 years now as a lecturer) is that this generally does not happen, and that the curriculum and assessment impede rather than promote research activity. Even in a BA level 3 course for mature students which centres on work-place research, at best students achieve a sound methodology and descriptive write-up.
However, it is my belief that even in schools, primary and secondary, children should problematise explanation, deconstruct arguments and learn to be creatively critical. Sometimes schools achieve a measure of this, but the curriculum and assessment patterns tend to focus on knowledge rather than thinking. That is why artificial ‘thinking skills’ programmes were designed, too little, too marginal and too late.
Education should be about questioning, problematising, arguing based on evidence, explaining, and testing explanations. So from the infants onwards, education and research should happen together. That is a better model of education than knowledge, so-called ‘facts’ and regurgitation of other people’s ideas, but formal assessment requires regurgitation and punishes creativity. The questions now taking place in Universities about integrating education and research are welcome, but should be applied to all education. If young people are to be prepared to manage their (and our) futures, education and research need to be one and the same, encouraging the new generation to ask awkward questions and tackle difficult problems. This is I am afraid the opposite of the model of education that we have.
Of course, new knowledge is rooted in the old, so deconstructing current knowledge claims are as important as rigorous attempts at reconstruction. Both require disciplined learning which has both a depth and a breadth. And it requires teachers who are tuned into this. The aim of teaching is to produce challenging learners – learners who are never content with easy answers, ask challenging questions, are skilled crap-detectors, and who look for better answers to better questions. Learners such as these also been to work cooperatively to recognize that knowledge creation is a team effort, in which positive discussion and creative disagreement have parts to play.
Showing posts with label knowledge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label knowledge. Show all posts
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Saturday, 24 January 2009
What is knowledge and what is real?
To an extent, life is an illusion and a delusion. Just because we think something is real does not make it so. In research which aims to produce new knowledge, we need to come to a view of where reality lies in old knowledge, where we are theorising, and what evidence we need to bridge gaps. Knowledge is different from belief in that knowledge is always based on evidence, whereas belief is given, accepted and passed on. Knowledge therefore changes as new evidence emerges, whilst belief normally remains the same. We might seek out the evidence behind our knowledge and deliberately try to disprove it or extend it. This is the purpose of research. So 'knowledge' is incomplete, transient, constantly revised. It is 'what we think we know at the moment'. My 'knowledge of Russia' would change if I went there. My knowledge of Maths would change if I studied and practiced it. We talk about knowledge as 'constructed' - that is, the evidence is weighed and from it we attempt to build the jigsaw. The jigsaw metaphor only goes so far, since there is a final form of the jigsaw, but no final form of knowledge. It evolves, and always will.
Nevertheless, and indeed because of this principle of uncertainty, the evidence has to be weighed and handled carefully, rigorously and reliably. It has to bear the weight we put upon it when constructing our version of knowledge. We have to satisfy other rigorous researchers who wish to know whether our work has implications for their own. We need therefore to be persuasive through our evidenced argument - demonstrating that our evidence reflects what is real and we have not selected only what we want. We need to consider whether the evidence is ambiguous, capable of being interpreted various ways. We have to distinguish between evidence, belief and opinion. These can cross contaminate.
The evidence has at some stage to be packaged, that is, put into a coherent explanatory argument. This is the construction of theory. It is a balance between understanding pre-existing theories - e.g. learning theories, development theories, management theories, organisational theories - and working out the most coherent way of explaining our own data in the light of the particular question we are asking.
A theory will develop over time. Evolution has been tested and modified for so long that no biologist would consider it insecure as an explanation of physical development mechanisms. But sometimes, researchers are conservative and it can be hard to overturn theories which have run their course because there is too much vested interest. Thomas Kuhn demonstrated this in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1961. New theories can change the way we view the world: plate techtonic theory and continental drift changed our way of approaching geology and physical geography. The theory of relativity changed physics for ever.
Qualitative research must be no less rigorous. It measures less and interprets more, so interpretation has to be multi-dimensional, polyvocal (drawing on many sources and points of view), and securely evidenced, not only using field notes but also recording methods of many kinds (voice and video recordings, photographs and documents).
Do we ever find "the real"? Scientists have traditionally believed that they are dealing with reality, and are called positivists. Yet explaining gravity, or light, or matter has been anything but clear over the centuries, and the future may still find us wanting. In the qualitative area, quality, feelings, motivations, strategies and so on are not difficult to evidence but rather more difficult to explain fully and deeply.
Thus we need to be cautious about claiming something as real. We hope that the issue we are working on is a real issue, and we can only demonstrate it by explaining why we have, through our life experiences, come to recognise that issue as real and in need of a solution.
Nevertheless, and indeed because of this principle of uncertainty, the evidence has to be weighed and handled carefully, rigorously and reliably. It has to bear the weight we put upon it when constructing our version of knowledge. We have to satisfy other rigorous researchers who wish to know whether our work has implications for their own. We need therefore to be persuasive through our evidenced argument - demonstrating that our evidence reflects what is real and we have not selected only what we want. We need to consider whether the evidence is ambiguous, capable of being interpreted various ways. We have to distinguish between evidence, belief and opinion. These can cross contaminate.
The evidence has at some stage to be packaged, that is, put into a coherent explanatory argument. This is the construction of theory. It is a balance between understanding pre-existing theories - e.g. learning theories, development theories, management theories, organisational theories - and working out the most coherent way of explaining our own data in the light of the particular question we are asking.
A theory will develop over time. Evolution has been tested and modified for so long that no biologist would consider it insecure as an explanation of physical development mechanisms. But sometimes, researchers are conservative and it can be hard to overturn theories which have run their course because there is too much vested interest. Thomas Kuhn demonstrated this in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1961. New theories can change the way we view the world: plate techtonic theory and continental drift changed our way of approaching geology and physical geography. The theory of relativity changed physics for ever.
Qualitative research must be no less rigorous. It measures less and interprets more, so interpretation has to be multi-dimensional, polyvocal (drawing on many sources and points of view), and securely evidenced, not only using field notes but also recording methods of many kinds (voice and video recordings, photographs and documents).
Do we ever find "the real"? Scientists have traditionally believed that they are dealing with reality, and are called positivists. Yet explaining gravity, or light, or matter has been anything but clear over the centuries, and the future may still find us wanting. In the qualitative area, quality, feelings, motivations, strategies and so on are not difficult to evidence but rather more difficult to explain fully and deeply.
Thus we need to be cautious about claiming something as real. We hope that the issue we are working on is a real issue, and we can only demonstrate it by explaining why we have, through our life experiences, come to recognise that issue as real and in need of a solution.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Knowledge
What I know today is different from what I knew yesterday, and will be different from what I will know tomorrow. WHen I was young I knew a lot of things for certain. As I get older I know less and less. However, the knowledge I have now helps me to navigate my world, and I cannot do without it. My knowledge is always transitional, moving from understanding to new understanding. Actually it is doing forwards and backwards in ways which I cannot appreciate till later.
Science is the same. Knowledge exists for others to try to disprove, or modify, in a never ending cycle. Scientific knowledge changes, often dramatically, when old frameworks get completely knocked down. Most don't think out of the box; some do, and change the box. Thomas Kuhn called it a paradigm shift. When everything that used to be believed is now disbelieved.
So what can I rely on as true? Quite a few things are beyond reasonable doubt, but what they might mean is a bit fluid. The only thing I can do is keep reflecting on them.
What does this mean for education? We spend most of our time telling children things that won't be considered true when they leave school. What we teach in primary school we have to revise in secondary school, and keep revising at GCSE, and again at A level, and again at university. We have to simplify, but do we really have to teach lies, knowingly? And then unteach what we have just taught?
On the question, what of all this is true, and how do we teach that in school:
I live (but quality of life is difficult to define)
I will die (but what then, what happens to "me").
Personally I come back always to justice as solid ground. It is an idea, I suppose, of selfless acting, something humans find difficult. It is not an emotion, that can get twisted in different directions, but a standard we can always return to.
Humans are always selfish in the sense of putting our own needs first. We will only become just if we can set this aside and put others first. All others. How to do this is the mystery.
Love is only secure if justice is embedded. That is, it ceases to be self-serving.
Hope is only secure if it is just.
So our critical base line has to be justice.
A child's education should start and end with this.
©Stephen Bigger 2008
Science is the same. Knowledge exists for others to try to disprove, or modify, in a never ending cycle. Scientific knowledge changes, often dramatically, when old frameworks get completely knocked down. Most don't think out of the box; some do, and change the box. Thomas Kuhn called it a paradigm shift. When everything that used to be believed is now disbelieved.
So what can I rely on as true? Quite a few things are beyond reasonable doubt, but what they might mean is a bit fluid. The only thing I can do is keep reflecting on them.
What does this mean for education? We spend most of our time telling children things that won't be considered true when they leave school. What we teach in primary school we have to revise in secondary school, and keep revising at GCSE, and again at A level, and again at university. We have to simplify, but do we really have to teach lies, knowingly? And then unteach what we have just taught?
On the question, what of all this is true, and how do we teach that in school:
I live (but quality of life is difficult to define)
I will die (but what then, what happens to "me").
Personally I come back always to justice as solid ground. It is an idea, I suppose, of selfless acting, something humans find difficult. It is not an emotion, that can get twisted in different directions, but a standard we can always return to.
Humans are always selfish in the sense of putting our own needs first. We will only become just if we can set this aside and put others first. All others. How to do this is the mystery.
Love is only secure if justice is embedded. That is, it ceases to be self-serving.
Hope is only secure if it is just.
So our critical base line has to be justice.
A child's education should start and end with this.
©Stephen Bigger 2008
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