Claudia, you raise an interesting question regarding the point at which a piece of information becomes common knowledge. I don't have an answer, but I will add that whether information should be treated as common knowledge also depends on who the readers/audience are. If I were writing for a neurophysiology journal and made reference to a well-known characteristics of the sodium-potassium pump, I doubt that an editor would ask me to provide a reference of any kind, but if the material was for an introductory textbook for students, I imagine that a reference to a detailed description of the pump would be required.
An anecdote: I used to follow Ann Treisman's work on attention since the early '80s. At one point in her work, she used a description that went something like: "Focal attention is the glue that binds the features together to form a perceptual unit". Most psychologists, especially cognitive psychologists, will immediately recognize the quote as being hers. Early on, when just about every variation of that phrase was used by others it was accompanied by a Treisman citation (I believe that she used the phrase in more than one publication). However, as time went by I began to notice more and more instances where the phraseology was not accompanied by a citation to Treisman; it had become common usage/common knowledge. Miguel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Claudia Stanny" <csta...@uwf.edu> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 1:33:05 PM Subject: Re: [tips] While we bemoan education We could extend this discussion to teaching activities, structure of courses/course syllabi, rubrics, etc. Few of us invent any really new activities; we usually borrow and adopt to local needs. Do we need to footnote a pair-share activity every time we use it? What about student poster sessions as final activities in lab classes? What about intro psychology textbooks that use the same chapter organization and often organize topics within chapters in near-identical ways? When I read research methods texts, the chapter on quasi-experimental designs nearly always reads like an extended paraphrase of Campbell and Stanley. The person who develops entirely new activities and presentation styles is novel and creative. The early adopters may be perceived as equally novel and creative, although all they did was recognize a great idea and adapt it. Eventually these become common practice. When every student speaker at every convocation starts to coordinate the speech with a sound track, people will say the performance is stale and derivative. Think of all those Elvis impersonators! :-) Early on, we feel that something should be cited. After multiple adoptions and modifications, it becomes common knowledge. This can be a tricky judgment. I think many students struggle with the idea of when an idea requires a citation and when it is common knowledge. At some point, a transition occurs. How do we define when that line has been crossed and explain it to our students? _____________________________________________ Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor NSF UWF Faculty ADVANCE Scholar School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 – 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 (direct) or 473-7435 (CUTLA) csta...@uwf.edu CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: miguelr...@comcast.net . To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=466839.0421d1005414eed82340aa280e7ce629&n=T&l=tips&o=27280 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-27280-466839.0421d1005414eed82340aa280e7ce...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=27297 or send a blank email to leave-27297-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
