Tag: education

Dreyfus Model experiment

The Dreyfus Model is a model of skills acquisition that describes how people progress in their knowledge:

  • Novice – Needs to be told exactly what to do. Very little context to base decisions on.
  • Advanced beginner – Has more context, but still needs rigid guidelines to follow.
  • Competent – Begins to question the reasoning behind the tasks, and can see longer term consequences.
  • Proficient – Still relies on rules, but able to seperate what is most important.
  • Expert – Works mainly on intuition, except in circumstances where problems occur

When we are involved in a discussion, guess the Dreyfus level of participants. Then, tailor the conversation to that. If you are the lower number one, bring the conversation to your level. Conversely, be sure you aren’t talking over the heads of the other participants.

why rules hurt experts

Age of ignorance

We take our young children to science museums, then as they get older we stop. In spite of threats like global warming and avian flu, most adults have very little understanding of how the world works. So, 50 years on from CP Snow’s famous ‘2 Cultures’ essay, is the old divide between arts and sciences deeper than ever?

as long as the political elites in the west continue to be scientifically illiterate lawyers, it will keep getting its ass kicked by china.

Teaching soldiers archaeology

As a former marine, he was reasonably prepared to “embrace the suck” on this one, assuming that the military would be too busy to guard important sites, his first recommendation. But he did hold out hope for at least a little “cultural awareness training.”

The military has decided to grant his wish by passing out 40K decks of cards to educate troops about archaeology in Iraq. “This site has survived 17 centuries. Will it survive you?”

preserving our history as it were

The groupies of science

for the last 4 years … has attended graduate physics seminars, used the offices reserved for doctoral and postdoctoral physics students and for all intents and purposes made the Varian Physics Lab her home. The only problem is that Okazaki appears to have no affiliation with Stanford and no real reason to be there.

When we discover a stowaway on the great Ship of Science, why throw her overboard when we could make her swab the decks?

Credential hunting

Credentialism‘s rampant spread means that even entry-level paper-pushing jobs like bank teller and office clerk require a university degree, while new diploma programs are sprouting to up the ante in occupations like retail management.

sadly, that was true of my own education as well. i would never hire > 90% of my classmates: most of them lazy paper chasers.