Reading: Moral Progress and Ethical Universals

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Ruth Macklin. Against relativism, Chapter 10.

“Cultural relativism was introduced (in part) to combat the racist, hierarchical Eurocentric ideas of progress.”

“The concept of moral progress as I will argue here, is a social concept: It applies only to events, institutions and social practices in countries, cultures, societies, eras, or periods in history, not to individual persons or personal moral behavior.”

Comparing moral progress of cultures:

– the principle of humaneness (how much do people suffer?)
– the principle of humanity (does the culture respect equal autonomy of every human?)

Moral progress is: “/…/ changes in laws in the direction of greater humaneness and respect for humanity in every person.”

“I see no good reason why religious mandates and practices should be immune from ethical judgements any more than cultural practices or traditions.”

2. The Individual Versus the “Common Good”: “particular rights properly termed human rights may be overridden only in extreme and extenuating circumstances.”

3. Cross-Cultural Elthical Judgments

4. What Turns Out To Be Relative

Reading: Science and Values

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Jürgen Mittelstrass. Public lecture in Tartu 7th Sept 2010. Published in Akadeemia.

2. Three types of science:

– scientific method (possible to repeat and control, clarity of expression, reasoning)

– institutional (universities)

– science as and idea or lifestyle (references to Greek philosophers)

3. Science as a product. Three types of research:

– basic and theoretical research
– basic but with a possibility to became commercial
– purely commercial purpose

4. Democratic science

Science is both democratic and not.

5. Ethics. Three types of problems.

– Products of science misused – e.g. nuclear bomb
– Ethical problems during the research process (medical experiments)
– Lies and frod

The triangle of problems has following corners – problems and principles of development, of research, and of the ethos.

6. Science and values used to be the same. Not any more.

Reading: Understanding Scientific Reasoning

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Ronald N. Giere

Chapter 1. Why study scientific reasoning

Science and technology have become an unignorable part of everyday life. “Information age” – much of the info concerns science or tech. To understand that we need some knowledge.

Scientific subjects range from purely intellectual to very practical: expanding universe, global warming, smoking and heart diseases.

How to learn: don’t need to understand what’s happening in labs. Enough if you can read reports. No need for new hardware or information, need to upgrade our ‘program’. Tactics: general ideas, examples, exercises.

Scientific reasoning is a skill and thus needs practice.

Chapter 2. Understanding and evaluating theoretical hypotheses

The example of discovering DNA structure by Watson and Crick. Further reading: The Double Helix by James Watson. This book was criticized for being too personal and not showing the scientific process ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ enough.

There is no ‘scientific method’ because different subjects need different methods. Scientists construct models. Then evaluate if the model fits. Then convince others and spread the word.

Models or maps represent the area mapped. They cannot be mistaken with the real thing. However, with theoretical models it happens. A theoretical model is part of an imagined world. A theoretical hypothesis is a statement about a relationship between a theoretical model and some aspect of the world.

A scientific theory has two components: a family of models and a set of theoretical hypotheses.

Need data to determine whether a model fits. Data has to be obtained by a physical interaction with differences reliably detected. All information is not relevant data.

A program for evaluating theoretical hypotheses:

1. Real world. Identify the aspect of world that is the focus of the study.
2. Model. Identify a theoretical model whose fit is an issue.
3. Prediction. What data should be obtained?
4. Data.
5. Negative evidence?
6. Positive evidence?

Exercises follow to practice the program.

Reading: The path to the normal science

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Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, chapter 2

‘Normal science’ is research that is based on one or more scientific achievements of past that is recognized as a base for future research. Nowadays these achievements are described in many science textbooks. These books present the central principles of these accepted theories and illustrate them. Before this kind of books emerged in the beginning of 19th century, books from science classics were often used (Aristoteles, Newton, Franklin, Lavoisier, Lyell).

Achievements that are innovative enough and yet do not answer all the relevant questions are called ‘paradigms’. This term is closely related to ‘normal science’. Paradigms offer models which form the basis for traditions: Newtons’ dynamics, Copernicus’s astronomy etc. People who work within same paradigms share same regulations and standards.

Different scientific subjects have different history of paradigms: electricity, light, genetics. Some fields developed their first generally accepted paradigm later than others.

Gathering evidence before a paradigm is established can be somewhat random because all collected facts seem equally important. Not theories but technology has (often) lead this process because many facts would be undiscovered without practical work – doctors, calendar makers, iron workers.

If paradigm shifts then some scientists will change their views but some will find themselves in isolation. Paradigms guide specialization – authors often start from where the theory books finish.

Reading: How parent explanation changes what children learn from everyday scientific thinking

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Fender, J. G., & Crowley, K. (2007). How parent explanation changes what children learn from everyday scientific thinking. Journal Of Applied Developmental Psychology, 28189-210. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2007.02.007

Main point: How parent explanation changes what children learn from everyday shared scientific thinking? Children who heard explanations were more likely to switch from procedural to conceptual understanding. Many lab experiments, need more real life situations. We explored the hypothesis that parent explanations in everyday settings might be an additional source of guidance for children’s cognitive development

Literature: Children are not systematic, exhaustive, or focused when collecting evidence, they nonetheless appear to do a good job building theories about everyday domains.

Parents use fragments of explanation: Suggesting how to
encode evidence; highlighting individual causal links; offering simple analogies; and perhaps introducing relevant principles and terminology. “We propose that everyday parent
explanation can provide children an on-line structure for encoding, storing, and making inferences about evidence as it is encountered.”

in-vivo versus in-vitro experiments. In-vivo=real-life situation, in-vitro=lab experiment. Pros and cons for each.

Study 1. Zoetrope (running horse). Three groups: no-parent, parent-no-explanation, parent-explanation. n=63 families, children 3-8 y. Only post-test. Results: Children who used the zoetrope with parents explored more extensively than solo children. Parents’ explanation correlated with children’s posttest but cannot prove causality.

Study 2. Had a pretest and random assignment. n=48 children, 5-8 y. Again same zoetrope. No parents. Wanted to prove causality. Probably designed to mend the previous design fail. Results: children were more likely to encode the zoetrope as animation when they heard adult explanation.

General discussion: Encoding shift from ‘spinning device’ to ‘animation device’ happened if parents explained but it didn’t change children’s understanding about the mechanism of animation. Others have reported more thorough parent explanations but also the settings were different – bedtime, dinner, driving, i.e. the talk was main thing and there was no physical examples. This study found that the parent explanations were brief and fragmentary.

Reading: Theory and Observation

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Rudolf Carnap.

Laws of science express the regularities of the world as precisely as possible. Not all laws are universal i.e. they do not apply under whatever circumstances. All such laws are based on singular statements. The Q is how are we able to go from such singular statements to assertion universal laws.

The value of laws: explanation and prediction

Induction and statistical probability

Theories and nonobservables

Correspondence rules.

 

Reading: Optimist, Pessimist and Pragmatist Views of Scientific Knowledge

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Karl Popper Optimist, Pessimist and Pragmatist Views on Scientific Knowledge (1963), After Open Society, pp 3-10.

“Theory of knowledge = epistemology” That’s the heart of philosophy.

Pessimists (agnostics) deny the possibility of justification. The others (optimists) believe. Kant referred to Newton and said that the sceptics must have been mistaken if they deny the obvious success of science. Alas, sceptics’ arguments have always been more solid.

Then there is the third group – pragmatists – who use the theories as practical instruments. Popper: We can see pragmatism as a form of scepticism because the pragmatist agrees with the sceptic on the impossibility of pure knowledge.

Einsteins’ theory was a better approximation to the truth than Newtons’s but he never claimed it to be “the truth”.

Popper’s position:

1. Both parties agree that the central problem is justification. This formulation is mistaken. No theory can be the truth but can explain the world better than other theories.

2. The problem of justification is not the same as the problem of knowledge.

3. We cannot say that a certain theory may not be refuted in future.

4. All criticism of a theory is an attempt to refute it.

5. Science is constantly subject to rational critical discussion.

6. Tests are part of this rational critical discussion.

7. The discussion consists of attempts to evaluate the relative merits of competing theories: which has the greater explanatory power.

– The optimists believed that the methods of science were about collecting evidence and generalizing (induction).

– The sceptics said that generalization is invalid: can never say by observation that all swans are white (Hume). But Hume admitted that although repetition (induction) is invalid, it seemed to work better than any rational procedure.

 

 

 

 

Reading: Theories of the State, Educational Expansion, Development, and Globalizations: Marxian and Critical Approaches

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Liliana Esther Olmos and Carlos Alberto Torres. R, Cowen and A, M, Kazamias (eds), International Handbook o/Comparative Education, 73-86. Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2009

Focus on Latin America.

Intro: “Education has in modern times been situated within the nation-state. /…/ formalized education hecomes problematic as globalization processes place limits on state autonomy and national sovereignty, affecting education in various ways.”

Educational Expansion: “In the last 30 years educational cxpansioll has attracted considerabie attention from Weberian, Functionalist, and Marxist cholars alike.”

“We argue /…/ that, analytically, it is more fruitful to approach the study of educational development in /third world/ societies in relation to the global process of capital accumulation, to which they were subjected under the historically concrete conditions of capitalist expansion and/or colonization.”

Conclusion: “the relationships between education and social change continue to be revisited by those seeking educa­tional reform, but the challenges of poverty remain seemingly intractable (not easily managed) for public policies-especially education-and democracy.”

Reading: The New Meaning of Educational Change 1-3

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Michael Fullan.

1. A Brief History of Educational Change

Not much happened in 1950s. The key to success is in improvement of relationships. End of 50s-beginning of 60s saw first major curriculum reform. By 70s it was clear that there was little success. In 1980s more funds and resources were thrown into the reform fire. The main reason for constant failing is in weak infrastructure or the clash of different goals.

2. Sources of Educational Change

It’s not the lack of innovation but just too many disconnected, episodic, fragmented projects. Many bigger schools and areas may benefit but generally if the reform comes from top it doesn’t work. There are many innovative ideas around but the programs are disconnected and schools are often forced to participate. The sources of innovation are weak and often misunderstood.

3. The Meaning of Educational Change

All changes involve loss, anxiety and struggle. When a change succeeds it can result in a sense of mastery, accomplishment and professional growth. Fear of fail and hope to succeed have bigger subjective impact than many would think.

Reading: Personality traits moderate the Big-Fish–Little-Pond Effect of academic self-concept

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Jonkmann, K., Becker, M., Marsh, H. W., Lüdtke, O., & Trautwein, U. (2012). Personality traits moderate the Big-Fish–Little-Pond Effect of academic self-concept. Learning And Individual Differences, 22736-746. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2012.07.020

Background: “In short, academic self-concepts are the result of social, dimensional, temporal, and criterion oriented comparisons: people build their beliefs about their capabilities in a certain subject domain by comparing their current performance with the performance of others, with their past performance, with their performance in other subject domains and with criterion standards.”

“/…/ Equally able students have lower academic self-concepts when attending high-achieving classrooms than when attending low-achieving classrooms. This effect is widely known in educational psychology as the Big-Fish-Little-Bond-Effect (BFLPE).”

Q: Does certain level of narcissism protect students’ self-concept in high-achieving environments?

Previous research on BFLBE moderators:

  • cultural factors – fairly robust
  • classroom environment – small or insignificant
  • individual student characteristics – effect is stronger for students who use less elaborative (perfectionist) learning strategies (memorization), prefer cooperative learning, who are math anxious (stressed)

Result: Students high in narcissism experienced smaller BFLPEs than did those with lower levels of narcissism.