Fortunately for every GS in the world there are 10 mentors or advisers
who thought the best for you. Whatever the intellectual talents of a GS,
their over-compensating attitude will leave them with no students who
want to work with them.
Mike Williams
On 3/30/14 1:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest
wrote:
Subject: Re:Help! Learning Styles are Eating the Brains of Our Young
From: "Mike Palij"<m...@nyu.edu>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:02:23 -0400
X-Message-Number: 2
On Fri, 28 Mar 2014 21:11:27 -0700, Mike Wiliams wrote:
>When responding to the research of students in high school
>or undergrads, I go by a simple maxim: What would Mr. Rogers
>say? They need to feel that the work is important and that
>they are important. They can have the drivel shaken out
>when they get to grad school.
I don't know if Mike Williams has lapsed into "Louis Schmierism"
(i.e., uncritical, unconditional positive regard that is usually safe
only for tenured professors and ill prepares students for
learning how to deal with professors and colleagues who will
ruthlessly exploit them in their quest for fame and fortune)
but let me provide a counterweight to the Mr. Rogers' position
by asking what would one of the most difficult professors I
ever had might do (and by difficult, I mean that in all possible
senses, from being intellectually opaque -- if you could not
understand him it was because you were too stupid -- to
emotionally distant -- the "don't bother me with the reasons
why you can't make a deadline/get work done/need a social life/etc,
there are others who can do your job).
I'll refer to this professor as "GS" and ask the question
"What would GS do?"
A little more background: when GS was hired for his professorship,
he initially taught a course at the undergraduate and graduate
level. After the first semester, the complaints from the undergraduates
were so great that the university administration (who viewed GS
as a prized faculty member and a jewel in its crown) decided that
GS didn't have to teach undergraduate courses, only graduate
level courses (presumably he would cause the least amount of
damage with graduate students). GS's level of productivity (often
through the efficient and effective use of graduate students) and
ability to get grant money secured his position in the university --
his teaching was secondary to all of this. So, he would become
a power in the psychology department, in the university, and in
the field, ultimately making him a member of the National Academy
of Sciences.
So, what would GS do? I imagine that he would argue that we
should not encourage people who cannot do good science or
are unable to distinguish between good science and bad science
from engaging in anything that can be construed as "science"
given the view that most of what passes for scientific research
is flawed, misleading, and a waste of precious resources.
With respect to high school students doing research projects,
I think that he might say that "bad science" has to be nipped in
the bud. Perhaps the student would be better off doing something
more suited to their intellectual abilities, such as selling real
estate or becoming a politician. This, however, is just speculation
on my part; I don't think GS would have cared what the student
did with their life -- there are far too many more important things
to be concerned about.
I'd like to point that I have come across other faculty/researchers
who came from the mode that made GS: some legitimately
brilliant but lacking in empathy and compassion, some who just
seemed good at denigrating and exploiting people even though
they never accomplished much in their own career. I have stopped
being amazed that people like this seem to rise to high levels
of power in the discipline because that seems to be a primary
goal (though some can't get to a very high level because they
are "B list" or "C list" academic superstars, but an academic
superstar is still a superstar from the perspective of administrators).
In the situation of reviewing a student's work on learning styles,
I would try to point out what the strengths and weaknesses are
of the research but would recommend that the student engage
in scholarship on the topic and to be mindful of the confirmation
bias, of only looking for research that supports one's favorite
hypothesis or position. They need to come to their own realization
of the limitations of their understanding of the phenomenon --
like most of us, they probably won't really follow the advice
given to them.
But one has to look on the bright side of this situation:
the student could have attempted a replication of one of Bem's PSI
"experiments" and had a successful replication. Who would
wants to explain that "retroactive causation" doesn't really exist
and that the results are probably due to expectancy effects and
other problems? What if the student's faculty sponsor actually
believes such stuff? Good luck.
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
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