robert dawson has tweaked our imaginations about what might be done with
some "group" of students (in psychology for example) who might not be
research doer material ... but, who still would benefit from some kind of
course or exposure that would help them READ psychology literature that has
a research base to it ...
the implication of this notion is that somehow ... simple understanding of
what is going on IN a psychology paper (to be able to "grasp its
basics) that has a research base to it is cognitively different than ...
and less complex ... than knowing how to do analysis PLUS interpreting it
... as in the case if you happen to actually DO some study
well, i wonder about that
one of the primary problems with reading ANY paper is that ... a paper is a
multi part message ... part of it is literature ... part of it is
formulating a worthwhile and DOABLE problem ... part of it is design and
data collection ... part of it is analysis ... part of it is interpretation
... and part of it (perhaps hardest of all) is the "so what ... what can we
make of all this?"
understanding a paper that has "research" in it is NOT just analysis ... in
fact, in most cases ... that is the least of the problems. creating a
poorly defined problem, using poor measures, doing a poor job of getting Ss
into different conditions, failing to control the treatment across the time
of the experiment, .... and not knowing how to factor in all these
difficulties when READING and interpreting the data ... are worse than
knowing or not knowing what the t test means (for example).
thus, understanding in the context of reading some research based paper ...
REQUIRES a multidimensional set of skills ... and many eyes in the back of
one's head to spot problems ... and know when something is being done well
... or royally messed up. IN MANY CASES ... NICE VERBIAGE MASKS THESE TWO
POSSIBLE OUTCOMES!
so, what can one do IF one accepts this point of view? is it possible to
have A course ... that revs up one to reading papers BETTER ... without any
prerequisite work? I DON'T THINK SO
learning these "reading" skills takes practice and experience OVER time ...
experiencing what goes on IN the process of doing some study (even if
small) ... learning what can and will go wrong ... learning how to deal
with that ... learning how investigations done by others fit into this
current data collection and analysis effort ... and, gradually, building
one's repertoire of skills and understandings. the more you do this, the
quicker one is able to "spot" something that went awry (or went good!) in a
paper one reads
thus, i suggest that unless students come into a course that is "designed"
to help them read literature better with skills ("some" basic savvy in
measurement, analysis, design, etc.) ... then the attempt to make them read
more literately ... will fail ... or, fall woefully short of what we are
hoping will happen
whether students will ever want to or actually do research down the line,
is a totally irrelevant matter ... the failure to TRY some ... and see
what happens ... will be our Achilles heel ...
back in undergrad school, we had a two semester sequence in psychology
called experimental design and methodology ... that blended small projects
(becoming increasingly complex) with analysis and write up ... that seemed
to work VERY well ... we had to look at some relevant literature for each
project ... think about the design we were going to use ... work out a plan
to collect data and analyze it ... and then try to summarize all that
activity to convince the instructor that we learned something of value
we seem NOW to be on the fast track of trying to allow students to AVOID
this ... and seem to think we can figure out some alternative that will
give them the same general level of "understanding" ... so they can cope
with articles and papers ... even though they might not want to do research
later
in my view, this is a very bad approach and fundamentally flawed
the very things that makes for understanding is the DOING ... without the
doing ... houston ... we have a problem
_________________________________________________________
dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university
208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about
the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
