Kristine
Posts: 3061
Joined: Sep. 2006
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| Quote (Ideaforager @ Feb. 07 2009,13:00) | | Quote | Kristine: Ben has a cause, but he doesn't really know what it is. But this is why it is important for people like Fogel to at least pay attention to Expelled. Fanatics often have their finger on a pulse - it's their analysis that off. But really, the question of a return to student-centered higher education is a crucial one! At their founding, universities used to be student guilds. In our modern, Web 2.0 era, we need to rethink higher education to make it more responsive to students.
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How? |
Good question. Right now I'm reading Scholarship Reconsidered by Ernest Boyer, past President of Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It seems that many professors also feel "expelled," compelled to publish when they were attracted to teaching in the first place. (Massimo Pigliucci also claims this in his book Denying Evolution.) Faculty are still largely rewarded for research. There seems to be, on the part of both students and faculty, a real desire for the reintegration of research and teaching, and more interdisciplinary collaboration, rather than sitting on committees and performing departmental chores (for faculty), and defining a specialty (for students).
Boyer says: | Quote | | Research per se was not the problem. The problem was that the research mission, which was appropriate for some institutions, created a shadow over the entire higher learning enterprise--and the model ot a "Berkeley" or an "Amherst" became the yardstick by which all institutions would be measured... Ironically, at the very time America's higher education institutions were becoming more open and inclusive, the culture of the professoriate was becoming more hierarchival and restrictive. |
That's as far as I've gotten. (I must have this all read by Tuesday.) But in my mind there's the fledgling idea that students (undergrads, not just grads) could in some basic ways participate in the research that faculty do, and that all faculty in an institution should read the papers of other faculty, even far outside their specialty, to build a sense of support and collegiality within, and not just without, the institution. (I do not have a biology degree, but have been able to glean insights from peer-reviewed lit in biology; likewise for computer science, and anthropology. THEN, faculty would also become aware that librarians and archivists also do research and publish peer-reviewed papers, which is part of my evil plot, bwa ha ha!
All this is brewing in my mind along with the issue of information literacy, which is close to the academic librarian's heart. From the point of view of the librarian, students shuffle in, often having procrastinated a research paper assignment, and beg the librarian to show them a few sources for them to cite, so that they can complete the paper in time. The whole point was for them to understand how to find sources for themselves. Also, the literature suggests that many faculty, in assigning research paper assignments to students, are trying to teach and reinforce search strategies that are outdated. Students are using Google these days. Being able to identify authoritative information on the internet is very important.
The U of M utilized student blogs in a way that was groundbreaking. One of my professors fought for it. I don't know much about that, yet. Frankly, I don't have answers about how exactly the new technology of Web 2.0 will redefine higher education, but I think it will - and we need to jump on it. (Of course, we have, here and in blogs and discussion groups, and in the promise of open access publishing and archiving.) The words of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (Princeton) seem prescient to me: | Quote | | What we are seeing is not joy another redrawing of the cultural map...but an alternation of the principles of mapping. Something is happening to the way we think about the way we think. |
I think Ben and the IDists are trying to manipulate the real frustrations of students into a crusade about "Darwinism" that has nothing to do with the reality of student life. If anything, students want more guidance from their professors, more teaching, more interaction, not to be cast to the winds of so-called "academic freedom" and left to their own devices to measure science against fringe and pseudoscience. They don't want the Michael Crichton "lone inventor" model of discovery. The irony is, Ben and his friends are advocating no real pedagological change in the academy - just an "add creationism and stir" tactic. But collaborative learning, seminars, and students taking on limited teaching roles in class is a growing idea. (Shit, every other class I have now means I have to give a presentation!
I'd like to see the creationists handle that. They don't like collaborative learning and their homeschooling techniques consist of top-down, lecture-based, close-ended questions that have only one answer. (Remember Jesus Camp? "Scientists say we have global warming. What's the answer?" "Well, scientists are just wrong, because the earth's temperature has only risen blah-de-blah percent." "Good boy.") These are the heirs to irrelevance.
I may have posted this paper elsewhere in this forum, but here's a great example: The Natural Selection: Identifying & Correcting Non-Science Student Preconceptions Through an Inquiry-Based, Critical Approach to Evolution by Jennifer R. Robbins and Pamela Roy. (Of course this is at the high school level, but I love the model.)
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Which came first: the shimmy, or the hip?
AtBC Poet Laureate
"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive
"Damn you. This means a trip to the library. Again." -- fnxtr
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(PS - I'm getting sick of Expelled. Finally.)
