On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 05:52:21 -0700, Louis E. Schmier wrote: >Mike, good morning. I certainly understand and agree with what you say. >Notice, I didn't include Daniel Pink's DRIVE, although he bring together a lot >of work in a very commendable way. Now, I agree too many people, including >professesionals, have jumped on bandwagons and done such misinterpretation, >distortion, and misapplication with Skinner, Benet, Piaget, Bloom, >Myers-Briggs, etc. I run into a bunch of such "pop" stuff myself at such >teaching conferences, literally put on my bright red shirt with "Devil's >Advocate" printed on it, ask the same questions, and too often get the same >vague answers. See, we can agree on somethings. Anyway, what I listed is, as >I said, a starter list, a whet your appetite list, a point in the direction of >list, not an alpha/omega list of stuff I've read, reflected upon, tested out, >adapted to, and applied in my classes. It's for you, if you're interested and >wish, to do, to go and satisfy any thirst I might have stirred.
See, here is the problem: you or a workshop leader may say "all of the things I am about to tell you are 'true' and tested and *YOU* can find the relevant studies in the literature". The first time I heard this I wondered "Well, how do I know that the studies *I FIND* are the studies *YOU ARE REFERRING TO?* It is not enough to simply provide an author's name and say "look him/her up" -- if that can be called a demonstration of the grasp of a literature or scholarship, it is a very, very poor form of scholarship. The person making the presentation, the person making claims on the basis of the research literature, is under the obligation to clearly identify specific references that are being relied upon for no other reason then to allow others to determine whether those references are being accurately presented. >There's a >plethora of peer reviewed stuff out there just in your discipline of the works >I cited: Deci, Dweck, Amabile, Gardner, Kohn, Goleman, Boyatzis, Frankl, that >"Mikhalyi guy," Rogers, Gilbert, Brooks, etc, etc, etc. Yes, I been given a list of names before and then told "let's play a guessing game: which specific articles am I relying on?" This become more pressing when one confuses an opinion piece with a empirical research study -- the conclusions one presents in an opinion piece is not the same as the conclusions based on valid research. >Of course, peer review >isn't necessarily infallible end-all, especially if a work being reviewed goes >against established norms and is banished to the hinterland. You know, Deci, >for example, ran into that decades ago. Again, people who teach research methods typically cover research sources and how to evaluate them. Peer review is not infallible but works well enough to catch the most egregious failures in research and its interpretation. However, it is also clear that even when research results run counter to "established beliefs", peer review can still work if the original results are valid and replicable. The most obvious example of this is the research by Barry Marshall and Robin Warren who showed that a number of cases of stomach ulcers are caused by the bacteria H. Pylori. When their research was first presented it was rejected because medical theory asserted that bacteria could not exist in the acid environment of the stomach. Their view, however, prevailed and changed the established view, winning them the 2005 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. For more on this point, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori#History -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=21218 or send a blank email to leave-21218-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
