Lion Gardiner- Discussion
Ed Neal: While we're doing this, why don't you ask if there's any questions. [Lion passing out hand-outs . . . some discussion]
Q: Are there any cross-cultural studies?
Lion Gardiner: There are plenty of cross-cultural studies on moral judgment development, but my understanding, not on the epistemological development. Mostly done with American college/university students. [Multiple discussions occurring]
Vin Steponaitis: I accept what you have been presenting . . . .But there's something missing. And, maybe the students don't know as much as we'd like them to know and don't think as critically as we'd like them to think, but, having said that, when I look at the kinds of data you present and I've seen this in papers for the last ten years, sometimes, I think there's almost an internal contradiction. Because, what we say is that we want students to think critically, but then all the measures of how well students are doing are based on factual knowledge. And, the second is that a lot of the measures that measures how well our students are doing, that are phrased in terms of the factual knowledge, presume that we know what the essential factual knowledge is, which is in a sense, a kind of dualistic thinking. So, I guess all I'm saying is that I agree with everything you said in terms of the basic points, but whenever I see surveys like that they sort of make me cringe a little bit because maybe they're misrepresenting a little bit what the situation really is. Someone may decide that X is a critical fact and I can think of lots of people who function effectively in society who may not know that fact, but may know why, which the person who constructed that index didn't estimate as a critical thing to know.
Lion Gardiner: This is a big controversy in K-12. By the same token don't forget toward the end there I did have some studies that looked at higher order things and there is other stuff out there in the research literature.
Nancy White: I have a question. It appears to me and I've been teaching for a long, long time as have many in this room and it appears to me that instead of getting easier, it's getting harder. And, certainly, I'm not going to blame myself. So, the picture does seem that the motivation for going to college is changing, the demographics of student populations are changing, the typical student, of course there is no typical student, the expectations of what to get out of college are changing. And, what we have to sell in anthropology, archaeology are far less valued than before. All of which makes more diversity in the class between what those expectations are. More students just wanting to get their requirement out of the way and archaeology is easier than something else. And, as anthropologists we know that diversity means different strategies for different kinds of students. So, as somebody said, this is what they're like when they come in, the semester is only so long, and we need target strategies that are quick and doable and I think it's getting harder, not easier.
Lion Gardiner: I spent all day yesterday in the classroom, two different courses. And, it's very difficult. But, I work, part of the problem, is that I work in a research university. I'm on my own. What I recommend when I go out as a consultant is that departments and faculty need to work like teams, and they need to be clear about what those outcomes are say for the biology majors, the archaeology majors. And, then they need to present a unified front to the students, "This is what we do here, this is what this discipline is about. It's about high order, whatever it's about." And, the students, when they come in, need to be resocialized. I just focused on a little piece of this, it's much more complex. And, it strikes me that in this particular group, you're all from the same discipline. You're working on a curriculum in that discipline. Understanding this problem, you can build into that, not just curriculum content. It's clear that there needs to be other things in the structure of the curricula and in the instruction. But, other things beyond that, like how do we resocialize the students when they come into the major or non-major students when they come and take our courses. How do we approach them? Start throwing archaeology at them? Or do we realize everything you just said? We have to build a world view, we have to sketch out a vision what archaeology can do for them and what it means to be an educated person and all these other things we care about. You can't just the content floating around in a vacuum.
Liz, not at IUPUI: I have two questions. Is there any correlation between achievement and liberal arts colleges versus public universities or institutions?
Lion Gardiner: Well, actually in the book I have data on what has to do with, you asked about achievement. Let me answer it my way and it may not answer your question. If you look at what goes on in classrooms, percentage of lecturing, level of cognitive demand, the Bloom taxonomy, and the classroom assessment, several studies where they compared small privates with larger state universities and great center universities, no differences. Another thing I think of is the Pascurella and Taranzini volume, 1991 How College Affects Students a massive review of twenty-six studies on how college affects students, including a lot of the stuff we were talking about. And, when they sum it all up, they say they don't see a correlation between prestige of the institution, the wealth of the institution, the age of the institution and these kinds of things and output, which is not what we're telling our perspective students.
Thank you very much.