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> Why not take a scientific approach to all education? Because it has been tried, and it does not seem to work very well. This is not a new idea. University p

> Why not take a scientific approach to all education? Because it has been tried, and it does not seem to work very well. This is not a new idea. University programs all over the U.S. are required to have "outcomes assessment" plans in place. These generally detail the various goals & objectives of the program and how the degree of program success is measured. So, people are doing this stuff all over the place. Have you ever heard of any significant improvement in the quality of education coming out of it all? As a university professor, I've been involved in outcomes assessment in various ways for years, and I haven't heard of anything like that. Keep in mind that the scientific method, as applied to figuring out how the world works, is not just something we do because we believe in the principles behind it. We do it because it works. And there are a huge number of success stories to back this up. But apparently, it doesn't work for education. Why not? Perhaps we don't know how to do it right. But that brings up a meta-problem: perhaps we need to take a scientific approach to figuring out how to take a scientific approach to education. Is anyone doing that? If not, I suspect this idea won't get anywhere.

jerf 17y ago
"perhaps we need to take a scientific approach to figuring out how to take a scientific approach to education." That's part of what I meant by "aggressive". I've actually been involved in some education research too and was generally unimpressed by the end result, which I would define as "impact on the education given to real students". (Ultimately, isn't education research a very practical thing? In the end, abstract research results are irrelevant.) Partially, the problem is the same as the one nutritionists face; it's a complicated system resistant to the sort of reductionist analysis that science really thrives on. All any given study can do is nibble around the edges, with no guarantee that the edge in question has any particular relevance. On the other hand, there are massive structural problems too. I don't see much evidence that any of this science is actually feeding back into schooling itself; it seems very detached from the process, whereas schooling remains dominated by political concerns and people just sort of spouting theories off. It was certainly that way when I was a kid 20 years ago (I clearly recall being on the receiving end of educational theories that when I checked up on them ten years later never had anything remotely resembling a scientific background, it was just some educator's pet theory), and I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that has changed much. Schools are now too busy teaching to the state mandated tests to have any room to try anything new that might fail. The feedback loop between science and schooling seems to be almost entirely severed. Please do correct me if I'm wrong on this. But in all the endless debates about school I hear I sure don't here much science getting cited. Note that for both issues, I have no beef with the researchers doing real science. Perhaps, at the risk of offending the scientists who wrote the initial post, what we need is a more engineering approach to schooling. Engineering of the sort that engineers do when they have to run ahead of the science a bit, but still produce results. Certainly looking at it from a computer programmer's point of view, I see a system that needs to be rolled back to step one of the engineering process. Now, you might think I mean "burn it down and start from scratch", but I actually mean, it's time to sit down and do requirements analysis again. Do we even have a clear sense of what we really want from schooling? I'm not even sure we have an answer to that question, and from an engineering standpoint that indicates to me we're not starting on a firm foundation.
Vitaly 17y ago
The scientific approach works for figuring out how nature works because nature doesn't try to game your system. TRying to measure performance of people in any area will inevitably lead to people gaming the system to optimize the score and not the actual goal.
b-man 17y ago
Sorry man, but I completely disagree with your assumption that this is being tried everywhere in the US. Perhaps what is being tried in some places is scientific approach to teaching, but never to learning. Plus, it is also a problem of paradigms, in the Kuhniam sense. People are stuck with the instructionist paradigm, and with the implementation of that model, that was built with old media as a vehicle. Dr. Carl Wieman words are a nice way to see that (here is a presentation of the same material http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/560 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/560). You could also check out Alan Kay's, Jerome Bruner's and others, specially Seymour Papert (like this for example http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html) Again, the paradigm of most people who are doing science in education is not adequate and leads to apathy, evasion and several other problems we see today.

jerf 17y ago

"perhaps we need to take a scientific approach to figuring out how to take a scientific approach to education." That's part of what I meant by "aggressive". I've actually been involved in some education research too and was generally unimpressed by the end result, which I would define as "impact on the education given to real students". (Ultimately, isn't education research a very practical thing? In the end, abstract research results are irrelevant.) Partially, the problem is the same as the one nutritionists face; it's a complicated system resistant to the sort of reductionist analysis that science really thrives on. All any given study can do is nibble around the edges, with no guarantee that the edge in question has any particular relevance. On the other hand, there are massive structural problems too. I don't see much evidence that any of this science is actually feeding back into schooling itself; it seems very detached from the process, whereas schooling remains dominated by political concerns and people just sort of spouting theories off. It was certainly that way when I was a kid 20 years ago (I clearly recall being on the receiving end of educational theories that when I checked up on them ten years later never had anything remotely resembling a scientific background, it was just some educator's pet theory), and I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that has changed much. Schools are now too busy teaching to the state mandated tests to have any room to try anything new that might fail. The feedback loop between science and schooling seems to be almost entirely severed. Please do correct me if I'm wrong on this. But in all the endless debates about school I hear I sure don't here much science getting cited. Note that for both issues, I have no beef with the researchers doing real science. Perhaps, at the risk of offending the scientists who wrote the initial post, what we need is a more engineering approach to schooling. Engineering of the sort that engineers do when they have to run ahead of the science a bit, but still produce results. Certainly looking at it from a computer programmer's point of view, I see a system that needs to be rolled back to step one of the engineering process. Now, you might think I mean "burn it down and start from scratch", but I actually mean, it's time to sit down and do requirements analysis again. Do we even have a clear sense of what we really want from schooling? I'm not even sure we have an answer to that question, and from an engineering standpoint that indicates to me we're not starting on a firm foundation.

Vitaly 17y ago

The scientific approach works for figuring out how nature works because nature doesn't try to game your system. TRying to measure performance of people in any area will inevitably lead to people gaming the system to optimize the score and not the actual goal.

b-man 17y ago

Sorry man, but I completely disagree with your assumption that this is being tried everywhere in the US. Perhaps what is being tried in some places is scientific approach to teaching, but never to learning. Plus, it is also a problem of paradigms, in the Kuhniam sense. People are stuck with the instructionist paradigm, and with the implementation of that model, that was built with old media as a vehicle. Dr. Carl Wieman words are a nice way to see that (here is a presentation of the same material http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/560 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/560). You could also check out Alan Kay's, Jerome Bruner's and others, specially Seymour Papert (like this for example http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html) Again, the paradigm of most people who are doing science in education is not adequate and leads to apathy, evasion and several other problems we see today.