On science pedagogy and some other matters
Dec. 6th, 2004 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirLowell House, on the Feast of St. Nicholas
The biology midterm was not as difficult as I feared it would be (the past midterm problems were much more difficult and caused some panic), and at times it was even enjoyable. I think biology this year has helped restore a lot of the self-confidence that chemistry leached away last semester and in many ways it's made me remember again why I like learning science. But that being said, my study habits have lost--I don't know how to put it--integrity? In high school I would study the material that I felt I needed to remember and know, not necessarily for the exam--of course, I realize in retrospect that I could afford to do that back then--and often that meant looking over everything, even material that wouldn't be tested, as long as I was interested or felt it was interesting. I also used to spend a lot of time constructing schemas and parallels; I visualized it as a mental framework in which the details that I had trouble memorizing by brute force would be inherent. But these days, I study "efficiently" and for the simple purpose of passing the exam--I skim the textbook, but don't bother reading it because I have no time to do that. It makes me sad and guilty, but what else can I do?
Furthermore, I've come to realize that all three of my science classes this year focus not so much on acquiring of raw knowledge but on developing thinking and problem-solving skills. Chemistry especially has become a mental acrobatic feat of extrapolation--the reactions all follow the same pattern but we must be able to adapt them to all sorts of circumstances. In fact, the problems are given from an empirical standpoint--we have data, and we must provide an explanation for that data based on our previous understanding of chemistry. It took me a long, long time to realize that because it frustrated me to no end when we were looking at two competing trends and had no way of knowing which trend outweighed the other. That sort of deductive approach is how we learn science in high school of course. But what we're expected to do now is to be given a certain result that requires a certain trend to dominate over another and then be able to give an explanation of why that might be.
I think that is particularly frustrating, especially after we've come to equate science with math, which being mostly theoretical does progress in such a deductive approach. In fact, physics is still taught that way: we are given formulas and laws, and we are supposed to predict data through algebraic manipulation and calculations, not vice versa. Daera told me that she was starting to dislike chemistry and prefer physics--I think people don't enter college liking science for its inductive method but rather for the definite ground that these deductive systems provide, like nonexperimental physics. The fact that chemistry, even being taught on a theoretical level, requires you to think instead like an experimentalist and derive principle from data, not data from principle, is unsettling. Biology however is taught even more inductively than chemistry, and how much more so for molecular biology, which is largely defined anyway as an experimental discipline, than genetics! I remember my roommate disliked the way that all our explanations of subcellular phenomena depended on chance and overwhelming excess--in mutagenesis for example there is no way of knowing where we generate mutations, only means of screening out the mutants you dislike, and only sheer exponential numbers and probability ensure that a mutation you want will appear at all--and again I think that is the discomfort one feels with inductive approaches. It is, in many ways, a backward step: deriving causality relationships by observing the consequence, not by knowing the antecedent.
I have the feeling I've talked/wrote about this subject before, but hey, I think it bears repeating. >_<
Also, I've realized why chemistry, and particularly organic chemistry, has been so aggravating, no matter who teaches it. Prof. Myers and Prof. Evans are both excellent lectures--Myers is organized beyond belief and Evans is witty and great at explaining confusing principles. But nevertheless, when you are being taught by a professor who either (1) has discovered the reaction he's talking about, (2) is close friends with the person who discovered the reaction he's talking about, (3) taught the person who discovered the reaction he's talking about or (4) is in the same department as the person who discovered the reaction he's talking about, then obviously the class is going to be insufferably difficult. (Not that our professors are arrogant; they never boast. But I mean, seriously, no matter how great they are at teaching, they are obviously never going to understand the perspective of a student who really has no idea what's going on.) Let me just say that Harvard's chemistry department is a dream for a prospective grad school applicant (who wants to go into chemistry, that is), but it's a nightmare for an undergrad. >_<
Oh, and today, while leaving the Science Center, I saw a troup of girls dressed in pink and red miniskirts and Santa hats, singing and dancing to Jingle Bell Rock. In today's below-freezing temperature. Some people will never cease to amaze me. >_<
Yours &c.
The biology midterm was not as difficult as I feared it would be (the past midterm problems were much more difficult and caused some panic), and at times it was even enjoyable. I think biology this year has helped restore a lot of the self-confidence that chemistry leached away last semester and in many ways it's made me remember again why I like learning science. But that being said, my study habits have lost--I don't know how to put it--integrity? In high school I would study the material that I felt I needed to remember and know, not necessarily for the exam--of course, I realize in retrospect that I could afford to do that back then--and often that meant looking over everything, even material that wouldn't be tested, as long as I was interested or felt it was interesting. I also used to spend a lot of time constructing schemas and parallels; I visualized it as a mental framework in which the details that I had trouble memorizing by brute force would be inherent. But these days, I study "efficiently" and for the simple purpose of passing the exam--I skim the textbook, but don't bother reading it because I have no time to do that. It makes me sad and guilty, but what else can I do?
Furthermore, I've come to realize that all three of my science classes this year focus not so much on acquiring of raw knowledge but on developing thinking and problem-solving skills. Chemistry especially has become a mental acrobatic feat of extrapolation--the reactions all follow the same pattern but we must be able to adapt them to all sorts of circumstances. In fact, the problems are given from an empirical standpoint--we have data, and we must provide an explanation for that data based on our previous understanding of chemistry. It took me a long, long time to realize that because it frustrated me to no end when we were looking at two competing trends and had no way of knowing which trend outweighed the other. That sort of deductive approach is how we learn science in high school of course. But what we're expected to do now is to be given a certain result that requires a certain trend to dominate over another and then be able to give an explanation of why that might be.
I think that is particularly frustrating, especially after we've come to equate science with math, which being mostly theoretical does progress in such a deductive approach. In fact, physics is still taught that way: we are given formulas and laws, and we are supposed to predict data through algebraic manipulation and calculations, not vice versa. Daera told me that she was starting to dislike chemistry and prefer physics--I think people don't enter college liking science for its inductive method but rather for the definite ground that these deductive systems provide, like nonexperimental physics. The fact that chemistry, even being taught on a theoretical level, requires you to think instead like an experimentalist and derive principle from data, not data from principle, is unsettling. Biology however is taught even more inductively than chemistry, and how much more so for molecular biology, which is largely defined anyway as an experimental discipline, than genetics! I remember my roommate disliked the way that all our explanations of subcellular phenomena depended on chance and overwhelming excess--in mutagenesis for example there is no way of knowing where we generate mutations, only means of screening out the mutants you dislike, and only sheer exponential numbers and probability ensure that a mutation you want will appear at all--and again I think that is the discomfort one feels with inductive approaches. It is, in many ways, a backward step: deriving causality relationships by observing the consequence, not by knowing the antecedent.
I have the feeling I've talked/wrote about this subject before, but hey, I think it bears repeating. >_<
Also, I've realized why chemistry, and particularly organic chemistry, has been so aggravating, no matter who teaches it. Prof. Myers and Prof. Evans are both excellent lectures--Myers is organized beyond belief and Evans is witty and great at explaining confusing principles. But nevertheless, when you are being taught by a professor who either (1) has discovered the reaction he's talking about, (2) is close friends with the person who discovered the reaction he's talking about, (3) taught the person who discovered the reaction he's talking about or (4) is in the same department as the person who discovered the reaction he's talking about, then obviously the class is going to be insufferably difficult. (Not that our professors are arrogant; they never boast. But I mean, seriously, no matter how great they are at teaching, they are obviously never going to understand the perspective of a student who really has no idea what's going on.) Let me just say that Harvard's chemistry department is a dream for a prospective grad school applicant (who wants to go into chemistry, that is), but it's a nightmare for an undergrad. >_<
Oh, and today, while leaving the Science Center, I saw a troup of girls dressed in pink and red miniskirts and Santa hats, singing and dancing to Jingle Bell Rock. In today's below-freezing temperature. Some people will never cease to amaze me. >_<
Yours &c.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-06 12:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-06 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-07 04:34 pm (UTC)In high school, I used to begin listening to Christmas songs beginning sometimes in late October! What's happened to me!??? Haha ...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-06 05:18 pm (UTC)btw, yes to kendo pics! i hope yours are better than mine (i.e. less blurry and retarded).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-06 07:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-06 07:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-10 01:05 pm (UTC)