Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:4492] The role of practice based research in clarifying theoretical foundations
From: Kinshuk (Kinshuk@massey.ac.nz)
Date: Wed 12 Mar 2003 - 00:08:52 MET
From: "Kinshuk" <Kinshuk@massey.ac.nz> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:4492] The role of practice based research in clarifying theoretical foundations Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 12:08:52 +1300
From: "Derek Chirnside" <derek.chirnside@cce.ac.nz>
To: <deanz-discuss@massey.ac.nz>
Subject: The role of practice based research in clarifying theoretical foundations
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 08:43:31 +1300
Firstly an introduction.
I appreciated the discussion last time round, but ended up travelling
for the first part of the discussion and never made it in.
I'm working in Christchurch (not that that makes any difference
online!!) at he College of Education. I'm called an educational
designer (my former boss having made a philosophical decision this was
different to Instructional designer) but I do a range of other things to
do with staff development, and I work with StudentNet, our learning
management system.
My background includes work in Physics education research. One aspect
that came to be of significant interest is what some refer to as the the
"Theory dependence of observations"
What we see/notice and more importantly - what we regard as important -
often depends on our mental model at that point. If we expect a colour
change we focus on it, but we may miss that fact that the solution gets
cooler.
Some how, real science progress has come as researchers 'bootstrap' off
things already theoretically accepted and move on to new underastanding.
[The classic case study is Isacc Newton]
In Physics Education research there are now tools to help evaluate
student achievement. Anecdotal and observational reseaerch is feeding
back into the deeper theoretical underpinnings. I think that even
though it is a fuzzy area, (a soft science) progress is being made.
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Ramble mode off now.
1. On the basis of this experience in physics education research I came
to have less confidence in some learning theory.
[I actually made a huge personal shift so that I now prefer a version of
a conservative constructivist model.]
2. I see much more of a feedback than the tree described by Mark early
on in his paper. Practics suggest fruitful avenues of theory
development and testing.
I do get fatigued by the number of the kinds of papers he describes.
"Here's what we did and here's the evaluation". We now shoould be in a
position to move on.
-Derek
Not really with the time yesterday of today to properly reflect on
Mark's paper, bud deciding to say something anyway.
More later.
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