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Depth is More Important Than Breadth in Teaching Science

Depth is More Important Than Breadth in Teaching Science. Depth. Breadth. Arleni Lopez Lizet Banuelos Kevin McMahon. SED 625SC. Current Situation:. E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s Solution:. Depth/Breadth binary is a “premature polarity. Polarization is a “barrier to progress.”. Hirsch’s Solution:.

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Depth is More Important Than Breadth in Teaching Science

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  1. Depth is More Important ThanBreadth in Teaching Science Depth Breadth Arleni Lopez Lizet Banuelos Kevin McMahon SED 625SC

  2. Current Situation:

  3. E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s Solution: • Depth/Breadth binary is a “premature polarity. • Polarization is a “barrier to progress.”

  4. Hirsch’s Solution: • Understanding the Four Principles of Learning will resolve the binary.

  5. The ability to learn something new is not primarily a general, formal skill. • Is domain specific • Learning to learn entails acquiring relevant knowledge about specific domains.

  6. General ability to learn is highly correlated with general knowledge. • Learning ability depends chiefly on having relevant prior knowledge.

  7. The best way to learn a subject is to learn its general principles and to study an ample number of diverse examples that illustrate those principles. • Deductive application.

  8. Broad general knowledge is the best entrée to deep knowledge. • “I draw this conclusion from the field of psychology called discourse analysis. The most effective way to introduce the meaning of a discourse is to start with a summary…. After students gain a broad context by developing a sense of the whole domain, they can mentally fit the various parts that follow into that whole, and makes sense of them.”

  9. Problems: • Conclusions are anecdotal. • Children start fitting parts into wholes in early childhood in the nascent development of domains. • Many discoveries made during the early careers of scientists before domain completion— Why?

  10. Problems (cont.) • Thinking “inside the box” of domain paradigms • See Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions

  11. Solution: • Don’t wait for domain completion to give opportunities for the depth needed for fitting pieces together. • It won’t be perfect. • It may be messy-creative • It will take time away from breadth. • They’ll be more engaged.

  12. Solution • They’ll remember it better. • Which means they can make more connections and be more creative down the road with it. • They may not score as well on standardized test— but where is there a correlation between test scores, creativity and good science.

  13. Solution (a little Philosophy): • Don’t try to resolve the binary. • Let the opposing sides battle it out. • Another words: Quit trying to reform education by resolving binaries such as depth/breadth, etc. Let education be a chaotic mess!

  14. Say what?! • That’s right— a chaotic mess! • To understand this let’s talk about binaries!

  15. Binaries are a part of many philosophical/religious systems. • Binaries express opposites that defy resolution, ie: they’re paradoxical Ying—Yang • One—Many • Subject—Object • Good—Evil • Yada—Yada

  16. What happens when you resolve a binary?—Nicholas of Cusa: • The Fall introduces binaries: good/evil, life/death, etc. • The Divine Logos is the Coincidentia Oppositorum. • %&$! happens when man tries to resolve binaries. Resolution only through “transfiguration.”

  17. What happens when you resolve a binary?—Jacques Derrida • All reality and knowledge thereof is a human construction. • Constructed through formation of binaries. • Resolve binaries results is the dissolution of meaning. • What you have left is nothing.

  18. So what we have is the ultimate binary: God and Nothing— Nicholi Berdyæv • But out of this God-Nothing complex comes creativity. • You know…Genesis… God speaking to the void, Let there be….

  19. What do we propose: • Don’t resolve the binary with government imposed solutions! • Let both poles battle it out. • In the chaos of nothing (no solution) there is freedom to be creative! • But right now the balance is swung to far to breadth so….

  20. Embrace the Chaos!

  21. However… • There may come a time when the binary balance may need to be shifted towards depth. • Keep Big Government out! • Principle of Subsidarity: best & most representative government is closest to the people. • Local control allow more nimble shifts in balance and easier for binary poles to “yell” at each other.

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