Existentialist In Crisis

I feel weighed down. I have traversed the desolate landscape of my own psyche, an ordeal that has cleaved the essence of my being. I am determined to reclaim the fragments of my former self. I have neglected one fragment, my friends. I have pushed them away, not out of malice, but because I thought isolation would protect me from the pain. Yet, in that self-imposed solitude, I only deepened the wounds. Reaching out now feels like an insurmountable task.

I now realize that they were not just fragments—they were pillars. Their presence has always tethered me to something greater than myself, offering light in the darkest corners of my mind. Reclaiming my former self requires not only introspection but reconnection. It is through them that I can begin to stitch together the frayed edges of my identity, to rebuild what was shattered, and to rediscover the strength that once defined me.

So to my friends, I am sorry. I apologize for the distance I created, for shutting you out when I needed you most. I see now that I can’t rebuild alone. I ask for your forgiveness.

The Olympics are an incredible human event. A significant number of countries compete in both old and new sports to be crowned Olympic champions. I have always thought the Olympics is the world’s best sporting event. It’s about different nations, different people coming together in celebration of humanity. But there is something beyond the glory and individual talent. It’s about the different nations, different people coming together in celebration of humanity. Those who are against humanity are not invited. At the 2024 Summer games this year in Paris, Russia was not allowed to participate due to its invasion of Ukraine. However, Russian athletes could be allowed to compete if they were labeled as “Individual Neutral Athletes”(CNBC). A good picture of the state of the world.

I am a patriotic person; I enjoy our national anthem. What else do you expect from a child of two US Army Veterans. I love seeing our athletes on the podium. Did you know the United States of America have won the most combined total number of medals won by a country (Wikipedia). I wonder why that is. Sports are a large part of American culture or is it the affluence, the money. Maybe people know, maybe its a mystery.

Wow. It has been 262 days since I last posted. That’s 8 months. My writing and typing have become weak. I moved apartments, I’ve stopped painting houses with my brother. I am back in my PhD program. I’m back. I got to earn my keep. It starts with practice. I must practice typing and writing. I must practice my linguistic abilities. Of course, I believe that blogging will help solve my problem, but my work may require a whole different set of skills. I speak of my research on chemistry education, a sub discipline of education related research. I am at heart a scientist of measurement and will not let my bipolar disorder define my life. I am reminded of Kay Redfield Jamison, who is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. I’ve read her book An Unquiet Mind, it was very inspiring.

It was about when I turned the lights off in the classroom, the classroom where we had been sheltering-in-place, that I started to feel adrenalin begin to pump through my veins. This experience has haunted me ever since. Why do I feel like a scared child? Is it because I am? What have I become since that experience?

I am and will always be someone who is just trying to help. My chosen profession, or at least the profession I have fallen into is teaching. But ever since that experience I have begun to question my decision. Am I destined to become a man with a position of power, a position of authority within the classroom. At the very least I could become a substitute teacher in a district. Or I could become a stationed chemistry teacher in that district, with responsibilities to teach and to lesson plan. Or I could become a lecturer at a community college, helping those along in their studies to bypass some part of this ridiculous system we live in. Or I could become a lecturer at a university, will more responsibility. Or I could become a tenured professor at a large university. What will I become?

The important thing to note is that I do not have to decide now. I am in the middle of my graduate studies and I deserve to finish them. To finish what I have started. After that, who knows what will become of me.

JLS

Generative artificial intelligence is scary. This new tool has brought a wealth of new experiences to many people. I can only begin to imagine how this will affect society as we currently know it. I am quite terrified of these new tools which I have at my disposal. Image generation using DALLE, or other software can only be described as a visceral experience. I asked it to generate an image of a women conducting a chemistry experiment and it was able to spit out two incredible images of two unreal chemists holding a collection of flasks with colorful liquids inside. Other than image generative artificial intelligence, there are large language models which are now widely accessible. I pay for the privilege of getting faster response times with ChatGPT 4. Can these large language models complete my homework? Can they write my essay? Yes, yes they can. As an educator, I think about the threat to professional credentials. Will tests be more important now that students can use generative large language models to write their homework? Will professional accreditation become obsoletely useless as students use these models to complete their course work? How can educators incorporate these new tools into our classrooms? How can we embrace these new tools?

JLS

What is art? Is it just the self-reflection of a human sole? A particular human, a single entity in this work. This brings into question intent and what the artist intended. Will the artists’ intent always be communicated through their art? Will the audience members always understand what the artist meant? Of course, without speaking directly to the artist, one will never truly understand the meaning of the art which the audience member experiences. Experience is subjective to time and place, to the feelings surrounding the experience. Did the audience member recently get into a fight with their significant other? Was the audience member hungry? The experiencing-self is different than the remembering-self. We must remember what Dainel Kuhlman has taught us, that the remembering-self dictates how we perceive our past experiences. I bring into question what ultimately someone remembers from their experiences with art.

Recently I attended a musical where there were only four players, not including the piano player. These wonderful people had practices deliberately to give us audience members an experience which we may or may not remember fondly. I will look back on the experience with joy. I was with two people I care deeply about. Two people who are best-friends, I was third wheeling for the evening. Regardless, I recognize the similarities between the musical and the friends I was with; the musical discusses friendship together despite the growing concerns surrounding them. In the musical, two people write about producing a musical. I found the whole ordeal do be tacky; the songs and dialogue had no real substance and was about exactly what it presented itself as, the how-to produce a play with silly songs that discussed nothing of substance. I remember one song in particular about monkeys and playbills, which was particularly ridiculous. I will remember this fondly.

JLS

The possibility of a bad job, why is this so mentally castrating? Why does my brain craft life as a black odyssey? My brain looks for the nearest stressor and capitalizes on the opportunity to generate fear. Why? I recently have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Kay Redfield Jamison is a professor at John Hopkins who writes about her experiences with bipolar disorder, the challenges it has brought her and the continued battle against it. I find her willingness to share inspirational. In the new preface to her book An Unquiet Mind, Jamison comments on the realized repercussions of disclosing such information 15 years after the original publication in 1995. There is a tension between talking about her diagnosis and not talking about it, as a professor of psychiatry, the stakes are non-trivial. In the new preface she writes “Far more people than I had realized conceptualize mental illness as a spiritual flaw or shortcoming in character. Public awareness lags behind the progress in our clinical and scientific understanding of depression and bipolar illness.” This sounds like a burden, a price to be paid. However, we cannot change public awareness if we do not talk about such pain. Jamison’s impression after all these years is the pain others have experienced due to this illness, mainly stories of others who have lost someone who had committed suicide.

How self-deprecating it must be to admit that you are afflicted by bipolar disorder?

Jamison ends the preface with this, “I feel differently about An Unquiet Mind. I have the occasional regret about having written it, certainly. But if, along with the writings and work of so many others, it has moved the understanding of mental illness a bit further into the light, then I am very glad that I made public my private experience of madness.”

JLS

References

Jamison, K. R. An Unquiet Mind : A Memoir of Moods and Madness. 2011. Random House. New York.

How do you learn to play an instrument? Practice. How do you learn to write serendipitously? Practice. How do you learn chemistry? Practice? What exactly? I am sure you can practice incorrectly. For example, a musician could play out of time. Something a metronome would solve. A musician playing out of time could continue to practice, unaware of their mistakes. The metronome provides immediate feedback to the musician, letting them know if they are out of time or not. This feedback changes the musician’s behavior much like an instructor telling students if they are right or wrong. 

A musician could also practice playing scales. Any music teacher would tell you this is a great thing to practice. Playing scales has an immediate benefit, countless sheets of music a musician could encounter while playing in a symphony would resemble scales. The ability to play scales can transfer to other applications. But how different are the scales in practice compared to the scales embedded within Mozart, Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky? I would say they are incredibly similar, only difference is the notes surrounding that scale, perhaps a musician must move around the fret board in a more specific way, but the scale remains embedded in the task. When do these scales become unrecognizable from their original context? That depends on how many notes differ from the original eight notes a scale makes up. I would say that three notes are required to establish a pattern of tonality. Two notes cannot establish a minor or major scale.

Practice is how people learn.

JLS

My actions as a teaching assistant for a large introductory chemistry course are nuanced. At a large research-intensive university in the Midwest, teaching a large number of students (~2800 students in the fall semester, ~1600 in the spring semester) presents constraints that highly dictate our interactions with our students and fellow teachers. Three instructors spend most of their time interacting with students by lecturing at them; more specifically, I would classify their actions as either telling truths, positing questions, or sitting in silence.

Any epistemic uncertainty appears in the ‘sitting in silence’ portion of class. This occurs after instructors ‘pose questions’ questions to students. The epistemic uncertainty quickly disappears when instructors begin ‘telling truths,’ which takes up the majority of lecture time.

Graduate students act as teaching assistants by interacting with students during the lecture. They also interact within the smaller discussion sections that teaching assistants lead. These sections meet once a week and hold 20~30 students. Class starts with the teaching assistant explaining what particular content students will be talking about. The purpose of the small discussion sections is to give students time to answer questions. The session begins with an exposition given by the teaching assistant informing students what content the session will include, and possible reminders of the content covered in lecture.

Students then work in groups of three answering questions and recording their answers on a worksheet. As students work, teaching assistants pose and answer student questions. Often in my interactions with students, I sit in silence after I have asked students questions, allowing time to think and for other group members to chime in. Any further information provided by the student is recognized verbally and either confirmed or challenged with questions. If a group of students have not been satisfied with my questions, I may leave them to ponder or directly challenge their misconceptions. I make sure to validate students’ previous answers despite their inaccuracy and point them towards the appropriate section in the course notes.

In my opinion, this mechanism of learning follows from the misconception theory of conceptual change. Perhaps we instructors place to much emphasis on cognitive conflict and do not bring in students’ prior conceptions enough. However, those prior conceptions can be counter intuitive in chemistry or physics. Researchers have spent a significant amount of time categorizing student misconceptions. Understanding where students struggle is helpful when attempting to answer student questions, I believe this is what some refer to as pedagogical content knowledge. How helpful is this in my day-to-day interactions with students? I know what explanations make intuitive sense to my students and I know what explanations Insite confusion instead of understanding. This understanding effects the vocabulary I use in class. It affects what I say to students, but it does not alter the main mechanism for learning.

JLS

The act of remembering is vital to learning. For a chemist to understand or explain a phenomenon, we use specific vocabulary that has nuanced meaning depending on the context. Vocabulary holds great power in communicating what you are thinking and within a science discipline it could be the difference between a correct and incorrect explanation (e.g., heat and temperature are different variables). Explanations crafted by young chemists who have yet to distinguish between the two variables would suffer a lack of specificity. However, this does not mean they absolutely, without a doubt, do not understand the question. Their mental cognitive resources (epistemic and conceptual) may have never activated. This is an important distinction within assessment, but I will make the assumption that all the questions we ask will activate those cognitive resources if students have them. This is for my own posterity within my argument and is not advisable.

What determines where or not students have any particular cognitive resource? There are different theoretical perspectives which seek to answer this question, the misconceptions theory and the resources theory of conceptual change are prominent in my field. These two theories are often pitted against each other, which is strange, because they both describe the same human phenomenon, learning. How are these theories similar?

The misconceptions perspective introduced an idea of cognitive conflict and posits the goal of instruction as challenging students’ pre-conceptions to remove them or alter them in line with disciplinary expectations. The challenge of students’ misconception is the mechanism for learning. I see this in class. We use a multiple-choice voting system in our large lecture halls to engage students, and force students to take a stance, to decide on an answer that represents their current conception. The instructor almost always revies the answer to our students, providing them with the correct information. This question-answer dance is how students learn what to put on their exams.

Most importantly in this process is the time in between asking students a particular question and when the instructor shows the answer. This time acts as a chance for students to turn on their own previous conceptions and solidify them, to take a stance on what they think they know. The subsequent answer provides the ultimate test of their knowledge. Students then must accept or reject the disciplinary expectation changing their conceptions (adding, removing, or altering pre-existing conceptions). If students get the answer correctly, this solidifies their current understanding. If students are so confused or lost, then the answer from the instructor may hold little to no meaning, they may not be able to alter their conceptions in light of new information if they do not understand that information. In order for students to understand any particular question, they must remember what the terms in the question mean, what prior questions we have asked that look similar to the current question, and what information is important for answering the question. If students do not remember key terms or phrases, they will be lost. I often ask students, when they ask me about the clicker question, previous questions that have already been covered to reveal. Their answers reveal to me what they know and what they don’t know, to a certain degree. This informs my next question, and the question after that. Through a quick conversation, I hope to extract information from a student. 

Is this the best mechanism for learning? Does this result in deep understanding that can be applied in unfamiliar questions or contexts. If students do not understand the questions, failing to remember all concepts necessary to answer the question, then how could they possibly learn? They don’t, they sit there in their confusion, hoping no one calls them out for not knowing. They fear being labeled as stupid. If students simply do not remember how, how is that stupid?

The resources perspective thinks of student cognition as context depend. Student memory is context depended on what is being asked of them. These concepts are intrinsically tied to the other concepts discussed in class or from personal experience. A misconceptions perspective views those personal memories (which students draw upon for their conception of how the world works) as stagnant and must be challenged wholesale. The resources conception moves away from ‘thing-ing’ knowledge. This theory asks researchers to think about student cognition on a smaller timescale. These resources appear or do not appear and the activation depends on context. When we ask students clicker questions, they draw upon long term memories to combine them with the stimulus the observe within their working memory. What determines the cognitive units that arise from long-term memory? Context clues.

In this context, the people in positions of power determine the disciplinary expectations. This in turn affects what resources get activated from students’ long-term memory and what they notice in the environment. 

JLS

You and your colleagues control others using your position of power. This is not a bad or good thing; the line is not as black and white as my friend Rodney thinks it is. Although I am sure the justification that Rodney uses is equal in merit as his belief. My mental resources are taxed; this is clear to any omnipotent observer; sleep deprivation has taken its toll. I belong here or my conception of these people must radically change. Rodney is either Lucifer or the next coming of Jesus Christ. Lester, another companion in my odyssey, is a wonderful person. His family has many businesses but has unfortunately wired most of the businesses they own and the homes Lester has lived in. Lester has taken painkillers for 30yrs, and I often see him moving around in a wheelchair.

Breakfast is always at 8 am. I have not had a carton of milk since grade school. The process of ripping the paper cartoon to receive the liquid inside brings back memories. This makes me think of the elementary school I went to and the plethora of wonderful learning experiences. David Kahneman talks about the experiencing and the remembering self. My remembering self has taken over; I am happy to give in. Memories help me navigate the world; a world full of unseen danger.

The unseen world of oppressive forces that seek to keep me down. There is community here, a local community between the patrons and the practitioners. This community is bound by commonality in our repeated behaviors, speech, and actions. It feels that these repetitive behaviors bounce endlessly in our own echo chamber. We live in a chamber, a box, a prison; some of my freedoms have been taken away. Is this okay?

Regardless, I have Qweli to thank for teaching me self-reflection. Being calm, taking a deep breath and looking someone in the eyes. Look someone in the eyes so you know they are there to help, even if they are my oppressors. Without hesitation, Qweli saved me from terrible wrongs that I may have perpetuated. He sang to me, “I don’t like this new Kayne, I like the old Kayne…” I have never gained so much perspective from two unspecifying stanzas, a simple verse from a song I have never completely listened to. It caught me off guard.

Plan: Play by the rules to leave faster to get better.

Qweli told me that it is hard to ask for help and let others know you struggle. But now is the time for rest. The world will be there when we leave. Tracy told me that you cannot pore from an empty cup.

What is the game? The game is about control, more importantly, self-control. That is why we are here: to live in uncertainty, to be comfortable in that uncertainty, to develop mental toughness against the violent context I live in. How can I be in control in all my contexts? I cannot. How do I lose control? I lose focus after a bad performance,  after I fail to meet my unreasonable expectations, after others fail to meet my expectations. I am surviving but not meeting my own expectations. It is scary when things become uncertain when control begins to slip out of my grasp. However, you are not your thoughts. You are your actions. I gain control of my actions with my acceptance of uncertainty.

Emotions keep us alive, and they motivate us to act, to avoid danger, to make decisions (the good and bad), to understand others and to understand ourselves. There are levels of emotional awareness that I have yet to master. Knowing the feeling exists, acknowledging that feeling, accepting that feeling, reflecting on that feeling, and moving forward with those emotions in tow. While I find some aspects of my odyssey, I cannot forget my interpretation of new stimuli is informed by my prior experiences. I have never felt such a loss of freedom. I have been privileged.

The people here are fascinating. So many experiences across different lives, some similar to my own, others drastically different. Our commonalities feel deep, which I attribute to our common ‘local’ situation. Our common problem is trauma. It explains our behavior, our common reaction to such violence. It is a constant battle for all of us, this battle against our own impulses to be safe, to survive our hostile environments. We must train our brains; a brain trains itself too well. Our ability to cope with such violence becomes engrained to our very being.

I needed this odyssey; I needed to wrestle with control, to push against it, to bend towards it. I needed a reset to gain control; this is self-care. I must stay vigilant on my life and its stressors. My young mind has been trained to perceive danger and my adult brain has taken this idea and ran with it. We must rebuild. For I am a lobster shedding its skin. Lobsters choose when to shed their shells, although they can choose to live in an uncomfortable environment. I am choosing to shed my exoskeleton to evolve. However, I am vagile in this state, naked and afraid, true to my being, my humanity has been challenged, and one does not easily cover from such a confrontation.

I choose confrontation because my humanity demands it. I demand to challenge any sense of right and wrong, any sense of injustice people experience, because I believe in justice. What inhuman piece of shit stands by while your fellow brothers and sisters suffer? Nothing can redeem a coward, not even love.

For love is action, specific actions that give evidence for the existence of love cannot stand alone in one human. These actions exist dependent on group dynamics. We do not love objects or games the same way we love people. Humans love with passion, with emotion, with an infancy that reflects love’s engrained nature within human society. We love our mothers and fathers; they give us warmth, food, protection, agency, and support. We love our brothers and sisters; they give us identity, hope, direction, and support. How do I love? How do I express my love? Verbal kindness, physical presence, a listening ear, a body to help move objects or move feelings. Do I express my love enough?

Reality is scary, but reality can be concurred. Honesty is respected in my local community, and it will be the glue that binds us.

There are many lived experiences to learn from, many anecdotes to listen to, and either laugh or cry during anyone’s monologue.

This is the part of my experience I keep thinking about: my monologues screaming and pleading into nothingness. Maybe I wanted people to hear me. Maybe I wanted to be heard. I wanted my pain to be seen. My monologues are my inner thoughts expressed, my inner soul displayed. I must move forward, past my mind’s constraints on my goals.

Responsibility is difficult to hold if you understand the gravity of your position. Regardless of my responsibilities within my career, I have a responsibility to myself, to my family, and to my community. I must remember progress is not linear.

Too long have I hidden my sadness from myself. Why do such a thing? To calm my anger, anger at a broken world I have put so much of my faith in. That is okay to be emotional at a loss of faith. What must follow is a rebuilding of my faith, faith in my own abilities, and my own brothers and sisters. My odyssey has caused a fracture in my faith in humanity. How could it not?

JLS

This was partially written over a manic episode in which I was awake for 65hrs.

My humanity has been challenged, my worldview changed, my perspective has shifted.

Who has control? I think about power often now, its impact on humanity, our behaviors, and thoughts. As someone who focuses on the cognitive-ness of humans, I will take a more empirical mindset from my own research tradition while undergoing my individual investigation into this particular phenomenon.

Those who have power have control over other people’s behavior. This appears in the behavior of the subordinate to those in power. The subordinate mimic those in positions of power; the cause I am sure is multifaceted, as all things in the social sciences.

A teacher, boss, state representative, religious leader, or parent have influence over others because they have positions of power.
The patterns of thought and behavior could be classified as a culture. Those with power in that ‘local’ culture can influence those in subordination, influence their behaviors and thoughts to reflect the person in charge. I focus on the behaviors exhibited in the classroom. I also recognize that there are many lenses to view this phenomenon from, such as socio-economic status (class), race, gender/sex, nationality, etc., and I recognize that I am making gross over-simplifications for my own posterity.

I am thinking about the ethical use of control. Assuming you know how to use your position of power to exhibit control over others, you may think to yourself, should I?

Should I use what I know to achieve my objective? I am a chemist, empiricist, and epistemologist, I see my work to be design-based, an engineer if you will. However, I do not see the difference, epistemologically, between actions or practices, between engineering and science, therefore I do not want to give the wrong impression that my work does not generate knowledge, I am a scientist.

Just like a teacher who uses sucrose to motivate, stimulate, entertain, and delight their students, they may ‘notice’ the influence of the sucrose on students in a positive or negative light. We must weigh the constraints of our environment against the design of the intervention. As a side note the example above is not quite ideal for my research. However, it does highlight a point, that the choice of means is equally important to intent. I fold in ‘context’ with methods or choice of means, as the ‘how to control’ is related to the context. Intent, this brings me back to control, and one’s access and knowledge of control, but the use of and motivation to control others. Using candy in a classroom is a lighthearted example I observed as a part of my clinical work as an in-service teacher.

I mention methods, but mainly intent, to concentrate on the morals of this human phenomenon. I bring to question the use of power to control others and whether it is right or wrong to do so. I believe that morals are relative to the culture that follows them, and as the microcosm of human behavior patterns goes, each person’s morality is uniquely influenced by their justified beliefs.

People believe in the use of control to protect and serve. A very political statement nowadays, filled with hidden innuendos. I recognize my own identify informing my particular believes; the people who raised me both served in the United States Army, both trying to climb the socioeconomic ladder. My parents have a strong sense of duty, which is reflected in repeated attempts at defining a true right and wrong. A sense of duty can act as a guide throughout life, that duty may change, but my sense of service is strong, even when my service towards others can change, they sense of duty stay the same.

If your actions are pre-determined or your actions are limited to a pre-determined list written by your oppressors, then your freedom has been challenged and taken away. Victor Frankel was Austrian psychiatrist who wrote about his time surviving the Holecaust. From his observations within a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl wrote A Man’s Search for Meaning. The perspective gained from Frankl’s writing is invaluable, it provides a window into harsh conditions in which people’s freedom, peoples humanity had been challenged. Victor used what he had learned from observing the detrimental conditions of the concentration camps to develop logotherapy; logotherapy posits a potential solution to elevate human suffering is in humanities drive for meaning within his/her life. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” This is what Frankl concluded from his time in the deep hell that is genocide. Frankl noticed a drastic shift of human behavior by observing his fellow inmates, a return to animalistic tendencies where the only concern is self-preservation and a disregard for the humanity of their fellow brothers and sisters. Could freedom be the key to prosperity for all? Could freedom be the ultimate key to elevating so much suffering around the world?

I have no clue. I mention Viktor Frankl to highlight humanities desire and drive to fight against a deterministic world. Many things are out of my control; this pill is particularly hard to swallow as a white male. Throughout my life I have had control or felt in control in most spaces. This control has never been that serious, I am twenty-four after all. Adults rarely give such power to young minds, which I believe is justified, especially as the danger increases.

The shooting at MSU has brought into question control, as the stakes have never been higher in my life. I used my position of power to lead, to command, to delegate what should happen and what will happen.
My position as the leader within that situation demanded control, I demanded control. The fear that comes with uncertainty heightened all emotions, in anyone involved. I used my control over others to achieve my objective, to protect and serve. Intent is vital to the ethical use of control. The intent to protect my students and fellow teaching assistants was my motivation. What if something goes wrong? Well, controlling every possible outcome is… well impossible. Something could have happened, but I controlled what I could. Do I believe this was the right thing to do? Absolutely.

I leave you with the words of Viktor Frank.

Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.

Existentialist in crisis,

JLS

Have you ever been let down by your expectations? I heard recently that expectations can be the thief of joy and I cannot stop asking myself, is that claim is true?

I spoke loudly, for the whole room to hear, “If my passion for you is a crime, then I don’t want to be innocent. The crowd turned and stared down the usurper, then looked at the King, waiting for his command, “Leave these lands for good, never lay your eyes on my daughter again. Prepare for your departure, you leave tonight!”

Two guards, one short one tall, entered the hall swiftly, picked up the young man and carried him through the great hall doors.

As the young man was tossed down the castle steps, he was confounded by the nature of his predicament, “how could sleeping with the King’s daughter possibly led to this outcome?”

JLS

Structuring education around a phenomenon in science education is not a new idea. John Dewey called attention to the division between a student’s lived experiences and facts “torn away from their original place in experience and rearranged with reference to some general principle”(Dewey, 1956). Dewey believed that if the subject matter was contained within a student’s experiences (i.e., falling down, cooking pasta, having the flu, etc.), these experiences could, in turn, be used to discover said subject matter (i.e., the force of gravity, phase changes, respiratory illness). Similarly, in a proscriptive manner, more recent efforts, such as project-based learning or Ambitious Science Teaching, use a driving question/anchoring event to situate learning across a unit, which attempts to support student sensemaking (Herrington & Daubenmire, 2014; Windschitl et al., 2018). So, what events or questions can we ask students, and, while answering, help them move towards a greater understanding of the chemistry in the world around them? Both a driving question and an anchoring event center on the students’  journey of epistemic uncertainty. This would be a monumental task for higher education; supporting thousands of students in a productive way would not be easy to implement, nor productive for me to attempt. Enter green and sustainable chemistry (GSC). Organic chemistry is intimately related to the growth and birth of green chemistry; therefore, organic chemistry curricula centered around the green chemistry phenomenon have become a possibility. Any phenomenon which impacts the environment or humans is not necessarily ‘green.’ Green is a stance one has on the sustainability of some phenomenon, and something can always be made ‘greener.’ Therefore, GSC is a set of phenomena in which students are expected to have chemistry knowledge and be able to use their chemistry knowledge to make decisions about those phenomena. Students should be able to make decisions with their chemistry knowledge, such as defining problems and proposing/evaluating solutions, regarding the relationship between chemistry, humans, and the environment. Students should also be able to construct explanations about those phenomena.

So how do you incorporate GSC into a curriculum and get students to develop a casual, mechanistic explanation for the underlying chemistry? Well, generating a causal mechanistic explanation for such a phenomenon is inherently difficult, given the context. The molecular-level chemistry may be hidden beneath the many layers that a real-world example brings to the explanatory ‘table’ (Pazicni & Flynn, 2019). Furthermore, the context in which student knowledge is activated has implications for what knowledge gets activated and how that knowledge gets acted upon (Hammer et al., 2005). Scaffolding student activities may be one way to support students in activating knowledge that is productive for the given context. Prior scholarship has shown that scaffolding supports casual, mechanistic reasoning in organic chemistry (Caspari et al., 2018; Crandell et al., 2020; Graulich & Caspari, 2021); however, we do not understand nor have evidence of how scaffolding will impact student knowledge within the context of green and sustainable chemistry. Furthermore, as the complexity of the phenomena increases, the amount of information and knowledge students have available to reason with increases. This could cause an increased cognitive load on students when attempting to reason; therefore, the complexity of GSC phenomena must be considered.

Say you decide on a phenomenon, then you must determine what exactly you want students to do. One specific practice from STEM disciplines that has gained a large amount of attention in DBER literature is causal mechanistic reasoning. I specify explanations as causal mechanistic to highlight both the how and why things happen, that is, explaining how this chemical phenomenon happens (i.e., the movement of electrons) and why it happens (i.e., attraction to a partial positive region of space).

Before we can support students in developing causal mechanistic explanations, first, we must ask, do you need to have students generate a causal mechanistic explanation to make decisions about the greenness of a phenomenon? One could have students use an online tool to generate a report about the greenness of specific reactants, solvents, etc., then determine which is greener, all without thinking about the underlying scientific principles at play (Reyes et al., 2023). While such information may be useful, it depends on the subsequent use of, and application of, the knowledge gained through those online tools. If causal explanations are not formed, then a holistic view of the GSC would not be obtained, and students would miss the opportunity to link chemistry to larger contents outside of the laboratory. One way of providing students with this view of GSC is systems thinking. What is systems thinking? Well, there is no agreed-upon definition (Orgill et al., 2019). However, it lies in contrast to a reductionist perspective often taken in the natural sciences. The general idea is to think about all the parts of the phenomenon: the laboratory, the environment, the business, and the legislative bodies. This looks quite different from the historical nature of any undergraduate course—marching from one chapter to the next in a textbook. This more holistic view intrinsically involves concepts beyond those traditionally covered in undergraduate courses. However, the expertise of most graduate students and professors lies in chemistry, not complex socio-scientific issues. If the incorporation of socio-scientific issues generates discussions among students regarding race, sex, or environmental injustice, potentially harmful dialogue could significantly impact our students ability to learn. I am not saying these conversations are not important, I believe any science education should include critical analysis of science. Any chemist graduate should be asked to define chemistry and science; future chemists should ponder what they are doing and why and relate their discipline to all aspects of life. But, if these critical conversations are not supported, students could be harmed, and I do not feel comfortable ‘rolling the dice’ with students’ wellbeing.

Profound differences in theory are never gratuitous or invented. They grow out of conflicting elements in a genuine problem. (Dewey, 1956)

In 2012, the National Research Council (hereafter the Council) released a report on discipline-based education research (DBER, pronounced DEE-burr) which outlined what DBER is, the important information discovered by DBER scholars, and methods used to generate evidence within the DBER field. The Council described DBER as investigating education from a positionality or lens that mirrors “the discipline’s priorities, worldview, knowledge, and practices”(Council, 2012b). As such, being a chemist in discipline-based education research implies a paradigm that reflects that of modern Western science. Introduced by Thomas Kuhn, a paradigm represents a tradition of scientific activity/thinking in a scientific field (so-called “normal science”) that has gathered enough believers while still being open to redefinition via revolution at a later date (Kuhn & Hacking, 2012). Within education and social science research, there are different philosophical assumptions that have an associated dichotomy between objective and subjective worldviews (Cohen et al., 2007), such as ontological, epistemological, psychological, and methodological assumptions.

If chemistry education research (CER) mirrors chemistry in its worldview, then CER holds a there is an objective reality, human behavior is deterministic, and through empirical methods, we can make positivistic claims about knowledge—backed by empirical evidence (Abell & Lederman, 2007, Chapter 1). This is reflected in the goals of DBER defined by the Council. Those relevant to this project include (1) understanding how people learn the knowledge and practices of the discipline to inform the design of curricula, which can generate (2) understanding the nature of the development of expertise, (3) identifying and measuring “appropriate” learning objectives (LO) and assessments (AX), and instruction to advance students toward those LO & AX, and (4) understanding how to make education equitable Council, 2012b).

CER operates under the philosophy that there exists an external reality where absolute truth exists, a consequence of the people who make up the discipline, chemists! The goal of understanding how people learn assumes that any principles that arise from our understanding of learning can be applied to any student. Leading students towards expert-like knowledge reflects this ontological and epistemological assumption.

 If one were to analyze the history of paradigms, learning theories, and methodologies used within CER, one would find concept inventories (Mulford & Robinson, 2002), empirical methodologies (Orgill & Bodner, 2007), and experimental design (M. M. Cooper, 2008; Sanger, 2008). Chemists love their instruments and experiments, but we can appreciate the beauty qualitative data can provide (Towns, 2008).

I hope our experience of quantum mechanics has allowed, over the years, chemists to embrace more uncertainty in the state of knowledge, which is reflected in the increase of studies employing mixed-methods and qualitative methodologies (Yildirim, 2020). Furthermore, the embrace of interpretivist/constructivist paradigms signals a shift in the paradigms used in CER and DBER (Abell & Lederman, 2007, Chapter 1; M. M. Cooper & Stowe, 2018; Stowe et al., 2021). Cooper and Stowe highlight the important differences between CER and its parent discipline.

CER studies differ from those in chemistry because (for the most part) the systems being studied are composed of people rather than molecules and are therefore subject to the vagaries of human behavior. Over the years methodologies developed by learning scientists have informed CER studies, allowing the collection of data from which evidence-based arguments could be made. Because CER is focused on how students learn about the behavior of atoms and molecules rather than directly studying the atoms and molecule themselves, the theories that guide the research, the experimental methodologies, and the data-collection instruments must differ from those utilized in traditional chemistry research. (2018, p. 6053)

I mention these paradigms because DBER can be differentiated from the knowledge and practices used in other science education literature, such as critical race theorists. One major contrast is the centrality of expert-like thinking in the DBER literature. In 2012, the National Research Council released a consensus report titled A Framework For K-12 Science Education (referred to as the Framework), which outlined a way to structure state standards for life, physical, earth, and space sciences. At its core, the framework centers on the knowledge and practices of modern scientists; see Figure 2 for the framework’s conceptualization of science activity. The Framework suggested curriculum developers structure their learning objectives around three concepts: disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), scientific and engineering practices (SEPs), and crosscutting concepts (CCCs). These three ideas and the subsequent student learning that would be assessed would be called, at least in higher education, three-dimensional learning (M. M. Cooper et al., 2017; M. M. Cooper, 2020). While the Framework was developed for secondary education, many researchers have found three-dimensional learning applicable to higher education, with some modifications (M. Cooper & Klymkowsky, 2013; M. M. Cooper et al., 2019). Why are standards structured around these three dimensions? DCIs are an attempt to structure learning experiences over time, built around large concepts that connect to many phenomena to promote an expert-like knowledge structure. DCIs are large generative concepts within a discipline that connect to many ideas (i.e., electrostatic & bonding interactions, energy); see Appendix B for all SEPs, CCCs, and chemistry DCIs. SEPs are an attempt to get students to use their knowledge in expert-like ways, given the understanding that the use of knowledge is a best practice for learning. CCCs attempt to structure ways of thinking, like practices, that are used across disciplines and grade levels. (Council, 2012a, 2012a; How People Learn, 2000). The three dimensions (DCIs, SEPs, CCCs) are used to create learning objectives that work to promote expert-like thinking and knowledge. What constitutes expert-like knowledge? The National Research Council’s consensus document on How People Learn reported on studies that compared the difference in ability between experts and novices. In one study, expert and novice chess players were asked to reconstruct a chess board from memory after seeing a short glimpse of a chess board in a specific configuration. The configuration was from a random point in a game; it was not completely random. Experts were much better at reconstructing the chess board from memory (putting more chess pieces in the correct positions) when compared to the novices. Surprisingly, if the chess board was randomly configured, so the pieces were scattered on the board in a fashion unlikely to be seen in a real game, experts’ and novices’ abilities to reconstruct the chess board from memory became much closer (How People Learn, 2000). “Experts have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they noticed and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environment” (How People Learn, 2000). In other words, their knowledge is organized in productive ways, given the stimuli they have seen and their intended use for such knowledge. This provides the impetus to structure educational experiences so that students can develop more expert knowledge. This is often in hopes of promoting transfer, although the transfer is another matter (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999).

Global climate change is the greatest threat humanity faces as a species. Our future is dependent on the action of today, and yet climate change remains an existential problem full of uncertainty (Pachauri et al., 2014). On the brighter side, 194 nation-states have agreed to combat climate change by signing an international treaty to prevent the mean global temperature difference (since the industrial revolution) from exceeding 2° C—signified with the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 (United Nations Environment Programme, 2015). As of 2023, the average sits at around 1° C (Climate Change, n.d.). Society must change to control the wasteful and climate-altering ways humans interact with the environment. Climate change has been politicized since at least April 22, 1970 (the first ‘earth day’), and there has been a general increase in public awareness (Hamilton et al., 2015; McCright & Dunlap, 2011). The required and limited number of solutions to climate change necessitates the incorporation of being ‘sustainable’ into education.

On June 3, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environmental and Development met and compiled Agenda 21, a policy document establishing goals for achieving sustainable humanity. Chapter 36 Section 3 outlines the purpose of education for sustainable development and its criticality in raising our capacity to tackle sustainability issues (Burmeister et al., 2012).

While basic education provides the underpinning for any environmental and developmental education, the latter needs to be incorporated as an essential part of learning. Both formal and non-formal education is indispensable to changing people’s attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns. It is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behavior consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision-making. To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socioeconomic environment, and human (which may include spiritual) development should be integrated in all disciplines and should employ formal and non-formal methods and effective means of communication.

The UN’s General Assembly also promoted such educational goals in Agenda 2030, which outlined the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs); see Appendix D. I found the content of Agenda 21 to be more substantial than Agenda 2030.

I mention these goals to highlight the global consensus governmental bodies have on education for a sustainable future. I believe this is justified. The next generation of citizens and scientists will have to make informed decisions regarding environmental and human hazards when engaging in science; therefore, preparing students to make those decisions should be a part of our curriculum. Furthermore, the incorporation of phenomena within instruction that pertain to problems faced by local communities has been used in K-12 science education to center student voices and use their emerging understanding in instruction, attempting to flip the script on what it means to engage in science (Krajcik & Shin, 2014; Morales-Doyle, 2017; Windschitl et al., 2018). Of the scientific disciplines, chemistry will be the focus of this report, specifically green chemistry (also referenced as green and sustainable chemistry). Let me highlight that some chemical processes may be green but not necessarily sustainable. For example, the use of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as an oxidant is considered green because it is relatively non-toxic and decomposes into water (H2O) and molecular oxygen (O2). However, the use of H2O2 is not sustainable because the production of H¬2O2 requires a lot of energy and generates substantial waste (Hâncu et al., 2002).

Other universities and colleges claim to be supporting education for sustainable development; over 115 institutions have signed the Green Chemistry Commitment, a ‘commitment’ to incorporating green and sustainable learning goals into curricular efforts. The learning goals were developed by Beyond Benign, a non-profit organization (About Mission & Vision, n.d.). Michigan State University signed in 2018. An institution/department that has signed the Green Chemistry Commitment agrees to incorporate specific learning objectives into their Chemistry (BS) curriculum. The exact process and timeline for this endeavor are unique to each institution. Those learning objectives include (1) a working theory of the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry, (2) an understanding of toxicology, (3) skills to “assess chemical products and processes and design greener alternatives,” and (4) preparedness to serve society in development and use of products and processes that are benign to humans and the environment (HE Student Learning Objectives, 2019).

However, current curricular efforts to incorporate green and sustainable chemistry (GSC) into the laboratory curriculum lack meaningful evidence to prove their efficacy and are not based on current theories of learning (Bretz, 2019). Furthermore, I believe that knowledge of green chemistry should not be limited to chemistry majors, and these learning objectives reflect the chemical industry, not the student. The first learning objective of the Green Chemistry Commitment references a well-known list of principles in green chemistry research (the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry) created by Paul Anastas and John Warner in 1998, see Appendix A. These principles guide decisions made by chemists to engineer chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances (Anastas & Warner, 1998). While quite useful for a chemist or chemical engineer, these principles were not developed for our students, nor were they developed with education in mind. What does it mean to have a working theory of these principles? Why should students have this knowledge? What does it enable them to do? The learning objectives of the Green Chemistry Commitment reflect the compartmentalization of knowledge, which is not based on current theories of learning (How People Learn, 2000). I believe this lack of learning-theory-informed curricula and the centering of chemical-industry perspectives is adversative to any goals described above and, most importantly, to our students.

References

About Mission & Vision. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.beyondbenign.org/about-mission-vision/

Anastas, P. T., & Warner, J. C. (1998). Green chemistry: Theory and practice. Oxford University Press.

Bretz, S. L. (2019). Evidence for the Importance of Laboratory Courses. Journal of Chemical Education, 96(2), 193–195. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00874

Burmeister, M., Rauch, F., & Eilks, I. (2012). Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and chemistry education. Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 13(2), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1039/C1RP90060A

Climate Change: Global Temperature | NOAA Climate.gov. (n.d.). Retrieved April 6, 2023, from http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

Hamilton, L. C., Hartter, J., Lemcke-Stampone, M., Moore, D. W., & Safford, T. G. (2015). Tracking Public Beliefs About Anthropogenic Climate Change. PLOS ONE, 10(9), e0138208. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138208

Hâncu, D., Green, J., & Beckman, E. J. (2002). H2O 2 in CO2: Sustainable Production and Green Reactions. Accounts of Chemical Research, 35(9), 757–764. https://doi.org/10.1021/ar010069r

HE Student Learning Objectives. (2019, July 16). https://www.beyondbenign.org/he-student-learning-objectives/

Krajcik, J. S., & Shin, N. (2014). Project-Based Learning. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 275–297). Cambridge University Press; Cambridge Core. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139519526.018

Maulucci, M. S. R., & Fann, K. T. (2016). Teaching for Social Justice in Science Education. In L. Avraamidou (Ed.), Studying Science Teacher Identity: Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Explorations (pp. 111–128). SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-528-9_6

McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2011). The Politicization of Climate Change and Polarization in the American Public’s Views of Global Warming, 2001–2010. The Sociological Quarterly, 52(2), 155–194. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2011.01198.x

Morales-Doyle, D. (2017). Justice-centered science pedagogy: A catalyst for academic achievement and social transformation. Science Education, 101(6), 1034–1060. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21305

Pachauri, R. K., Allen, M. R., Barros, V. R., Broome, J., Cramer, W., Christ, R., Church, J. A., Clarke, L., Dahe, Q. D., Dasqupta, P., Dubash, N. K., Edenhofer, O., Elgizouli, I., Field, C. B., Forster, P., Friedlingstein, P., Fuglestvedt, J., Gomez-Echeverri, L., Hallegatte, S., … van Ypersele, J.-P. (2014). Climate change 2014 synthesis report. Contribution of working groups I, II, and III to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC.

Windschitl, M., Thompson, J. J., & Braaten, M. L. (2018). Ambitious science teaching. Harvard Education Press.

Out of all the science teachers I have had in my educational career, two chemistry teachers in my life have drastically altered my personal and professional trajectories. Dr. X is one of those chemistry teachers.

As an undergraduate at my university, I had the opportunity to have Dr. X as a lecturer for the second semester of general chemistry. Throughout both semesters of general chemistry, I developed a deep understanding and love of chemistry. Previous experiences in high school had caused me to despise chemistry, favoring the much more understandable and essential biology. But now my opinions have changed. I see chemistry as an explanatory framework I can apply to other contexts, giving me accessibility to further knowledge and skills. I believe that Dr. X was directly involved in granting me this power. She helped integrate the evidence-based curriculum I learned into the department, which I can imagine was difficult. Teachers who put so much effort into their profession show they care for their students.

I frequently observed such care as an undergraduate learning assistant and now as a graduate student. Dr. X leads the weekly teaching assistant/learning assistant meetings, covering the material for the following weeks’ recitations and all administrative business. Being in a position of power, she has to make decisions regarding education policies, grading, extra help, etc. She bases her justifications for those decisions on equity and equality. Despite the massive number of students the general chemistry department educates—which could lead to some impersonal interactions—it is clear that the instructors take great care to support their students, thinking about their needs and opening dialogues when necessary.

Now, as a graduate student who hopes to be in an administrative position one day, Dr. X’s leadership provides a great example to learn from. Dr. X and the other general chemistry professors are resilient. The response from Dr. X following the shooting on February 13th, 2023, is inspiring. She has been open and honest, communicating her thoughts on moving forward while accepting input from the graduate students. The response to her students has been swift and fair, altering the syllabus not once but twice to accommodate the tragic event that has struck our community. This commitment to the community is a defining feature of a great educator. Of all the chemistry teachers I had as an undergraduate, I believe Dr. X is one of my favorites.

JLS

Sometimes, if it proves useful, I conceptualize a curriculum as three pillars: learning objectives, assessments, instruction. The alignment between these pillars is fundamental to productive learning/teaching. Learning objectives (LO) define what you want students to know and be able to do with that knowledge. Assessments (AX) are opportunities for students to showcase what they know and can do. Instruction (IN) is how students are expected to know and do things; it’s how they learn. Regardless of how you define LO, AX, and IN, the alignment between them is paramount to insure you, the instructor, are not fighting against yourself, and that your students are not set up to fail.

If your LO are misaligned, then your assessments are not measuring what you want them to be, and your instructor is not teaching student what you want them to learn. If your AX are misaligned, then you are still not measuring your LO properly and your guidance will be misled by all formative AX. If your IN is misaligned, then your students are not properly supported to meet your LO and your AX are doomed to fail because of the lack of support for your students.

This is not my idea but was developed by Wiggins and McTighe (2005), and it is called Backwards Design. It is a powerful tool, not as complicated as evidence centered design (Michelle et. al 2015), and generalizable to other contexts. I wish my name would be attached to something so impactful. Not for the number of citations, but for the people who will benefit from it.

References

Michelle M. Riconscente, Robert J. Mislevy, & Seth Corrigan. (2015). Evidence-Centered Design. In Handbook of Test Development. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203102961.ch3

Wiggins G. P. & McTighe J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

I was immediately excited when I discovered that I could potentially engage in chemistry education research which involved students thinking about socio-scientific issues. It has so much potential. The K-12 science education literature for has been speaking about such efforts. More broadly some literature recommends centering units around phenomenon in project-based learning, or more specifically in which students engage in what I would classify as a Freirean problem-posing education, in which units center social justice science issues with the explicitly purpose of disrupting systems of oppression (Freire, 1968; Krajcik & Shin, 2014; Morales-Doyle, 2017). I am not exactly investigating that, although I would love to bring such lenses to future studies.

JLs

“I believe that (the) educational process has two sides—one psychological and one sociological” … “Profound differences in theory are never gratuitous or invented. They grow out of conflicting elements in a genuine problem.” John Dewey, In Dworkin, M. (1959) Dewey on Education pp. 20, 91.

References

Freire, Paulo. (1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Seabury Press.

Krajcik, J. S., & Shin, N. (2014). Project-Based Learning. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 275–297). Cambridge University Press; Cambridge Core. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139519526.018

Morales-Doyle, D. (2017). Justice-centered science pedagogy: A catalyst for academic achievement and social transformation. Science Education, 101(6), 1034–1060. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21305

I have heard, from a colleague, that college is free in Germany. Playing out this scenario in the mind, one would imagine the economic barrier to college degrees would be significantly lower. One might expect the application rates would drastically increase, although I recognize the barrier to entry into post-secondary education is not entirely removed for oppressed groups. Would an increase in application rates increase enrollment rates? Could colleges and universities support an excess of students? There are only so many professors, academic specialists, and teaching assistants.

Failing a course is significantly less harmful to one’s bank account and career. There is always next semester. Hell, picking what university to go to is significantly less daunting, if you do not like it, or the program you are in, stop going. Although geographical location is still limiting opportunities for those who cannot afford to so easily re-locate.

The number of students enrolled in introductory science courses would change, requiring different means of instruction. How might higher education respond in differentiating curriculum to meet the needs of the diversified population?

You could differentiate at the institutional, degree/program, or course level. If differentiation occurred at the institutional level, that would inevitably affect the degree/programs and courses offered at such an institution. Although, a university specialized in chemistry seems highly unpractical. Possibly, a more general STEM university. Maybe this will better meet the needs of the population, removing extraneous elective courses. Please note, I do not advocate for the deletion of liberal education. I can reasonably see an introductory humanities course centered around science. Analyzing Chemistry and the Industrial Revolution: From Haber–Bosch to the Atomic Bomb, or Epistemologies of Non-Western Science both sound like great titles for courses. I only wish to argue that by understanding the perspectives of the population of students we teach, it will help inform our pedagogy to better meet the needs of those students. Curriculum can more easily reach students where they are, building on their prior knowledge more effectively or removing content students already know.

However, there is still more differentiation to be done. For example, a natural science focused institution could offer a chemistry degree, a biology degree, and a biochemistry degree. Of course, these degrees overlap somewhat with expected skills, knowledge, abilities, etc. So enviably some courses offered will have students who have different degrees. But when do you stop and say, these people need these courses, while these people do not? By what criteria do you determine what people need? Let’s say that criteria solely depend on the usefulness for the purpose it serves (i.e. how well it prepares students for their careers/lives). But, eventually our hypothetical chemist, biologist, and biochemist will be doing different things in their careers. So, you differentiate the courses within the program. But how? I suppose the current model is when undergraduates begin taking higher-level courses; courses that prepare individuals not for generalized application of knowledge, but for specialized application of the skills/abilities and knowledge required to be successful in a students’ career. But how ineffective, too many undergraduates taking courses they will never remember.

Regardless, if college was free, I could see the ‘pipeline’ to the middle class significantly altered.

JLS

I set a goal to blog every week. After the shooting on February 13th, it took me a long time to write down my experience, attempting to polish my story to the best of my ability, writing and rewriting. It took me the whole week to finish; therefore, I missed a week, I failed. However, I found this to be reasonable given the situation. I could not disrespect such an event with an inaccurate account.

Now that I find myself out of practice it is more difficult to write about anything. This topic on goals, for example, does not amount to anything. I am grasping at straws.

Well, it does not exactly amount to nothing. I do find small goals important, and as a musician, I find practice through repetition to be important. I suppose this piece is about that; I shall attempt to meet my goals. But if I fall short, I must remember it is not the end of the world. Furthermore, the probability of accomplishing my goals does not rest on perfection, I can in fact accomplish my goals and be a terrible writer.

JLS

I feel frustrated with gun violence, feeling hopeless. What could I do? Could I contribute to the body of research which documents the impact gun violence has on higher education students? What does this research say about gun violence? Who would this research help? Who will it harm? I would need IRB approval; this would never work. Am I qualified to do this research? Does it matter if it is not a research journal, if it is something else? A letter perhaps, I want to tell their story, I want to help. Could I ask student to get them to tell me their story? How will I impact the telling of their story, will I be authentic? Is this ethical? How could this project harm its participants? How may it serve them? I am not qualified. Who would publish this? Can I do that on my own? I should tell my story, for this is the only story I am qualified to comment on.

JLS

A place of learning should not instill the fear of death. My time in the public education system has taught me, through every lock-down drill, active shooter training, news story, or intrinsic thought, to fear the seemingly inevitable scenario in which I would have to fight for my life in a classroom. On multiple occasions, I have imagined what I would do if a gunman began firing upon my innocent students. Anticipating and planning my actions for the event of an active shooter, beyond the directions given at active shooter training, when a gunman comes rattling at the door. What would I do? Throw a textbook? Throw a chair? My shoes?

Monday night, February 13th, I was proctoring an exam from 7:15 pm to 8:35 pm at Michigan State University. At 8:32 pm, a notification showed up on the computer screen—which we use to project a clock in front of the student—titled “Shots Fired,” issued by the MSU Police Department. The alert reported shots fired on or near the East Lansing campus. It directed us to immediately secure in place and run, hide, and fight. At that time, I do not believe anyone understood the severity of the situation, which dawned on us perhaps too slowly.

I was with eight teaching assistants and nine students. I took control; we did not negotiate. I was in charge of the exam; perhaps it was for the best? I had training from my time teaching high school chemistry. Regardless, I did not quietly have this conversation with myself; I told people what to do.

We received more information; emails from the police department, from my department’s chair, texts from family and friends who were listening to the police scanner, and from the people I was with who had been looking at the news and social media. Once we had learned the location of the first shooting at Berkey Hall, my mood changed. The lecture hall we were in was within a 10 min walk from Berkey. Once I learned people had been killed, my heart sank.

This lecture hall can hold around 400 people. No tables, no chairs, no freely moving furniture to be used to barricade the doors, only terribly uncomfortable desks screwed to the floor. The entrance to the lecture had four large double doors, which open outward, and cannot be locked. At the other end of the lecture hall, where two metal doors which open directly outside. Luckly these doors do not have handles on the outside, preventing anyone from entering from the outside. I told everyone to sit on the floor next to them. I however was pacing between the four doors at the other end of the lecture hall holding my shoes in my hand—I had used my belt and shoelaces (and other peoples belts and shoelaces) to tie the doors closed.

Occasionally, I would walk back to the group of students and teaching assistants, both to receive more information and check on them. The first time I did this, I notice some TA’s missing. I found one TA casually sitting in a desk a couple rows from the front. Every time this TA moved and made any noise, all the other people would jump, and turn towards the doors, fearful. After I quietly told, and swore at the TA to sit with the others, I notice two other TAs laying down between the rows of desks. I approached them, and one of them turned toward me, asking, “Jake, are we going to be alright?” Her voice was shaky, she was scared. I was scared. I told her, “Yes, I have tied the doors close with my belt and shoelaces, and you are going to sit with everyone else.” I lied. You do not know if you are going to be okay. The state of unknown is terrible, it allows any seemingly plausible thought to worry you.

For most of the four-hour lock-down, I was pacing back and forth between the entrances to the lecture hall, thinking only about fighting to the death whoever attempted to enter. A couple of hours into the shelter-in-place, I heard someone attempt to open the door. I ran over and found a young male, probably a student, but in the moment, I was not convinced. I yelled at him, “what the fuck are you doing?” I think this scared him, and he ran off. This moment causes me the most pain, it is by far the most terrifying thing that has happened to me. I quietly whispered across the lecture to let everyone it was just a student. Fortunately, moments later I heard an older man talk with this student and take the student into a classroom. When I began walking between the doors again, I found a note slipped under the door. I was written by that student, explaining that he was looking for his friend who was supposedly there, probably from the exam. The note asks if there is anything he can do to prove who he is and why he is there. I keep thinking about this student. What was going through his head? What if something happened?

Recently, I read a blog post by Brandon Van Der Heide which articulated something I was feeling but could not capture with words. Van Der Heide is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University and wrote about the societal agreement that teachers take on the moment they decide to be teachers. On Monday night, I accepted this agreement, I accepted that I will be the first to die. I am not special; I am a teacher. What angers me is the feeling of inevitability. I am not shocked by my experience. Traumatized? Yes, but not surprised by this nonsensical violence or by my own acceptance of death. I was already dead during the Oxford shooting; I had died when I became a teacher. Not because I wanted too, but because that is the expectation.

JLS

My clinical experience as a student teacher forever altered my pedagogical focus for high school science. 

Once, I engaged in a power struggle between me and a student of mine. This student asked what would happen if they did something; something which was obviously discouraged. Context is important; they ingested something edible, but it was a part of a chemistry lab and not to be eaten affirmatively. Therefore, I responded affirmatively that they would leave my classroom. 

This student proceeded to do that something. I said I was disappointed with them and walked away, sighing and reflecting. I did not proceed to yell or punish this student; I did not want to. Only after reflecting on the situation did, I recognize the power struggle which I engaged this student in; therefore, I am partly to blame for their actions. 

Later in the year, this particular student left school in the middle of the day, cussing out their instructors. Later, this student was located standing atop a freeway bridge, I guess contemplating jumping. Something I learned that semester is summed up in a quote by Yogi Bhajan, “If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time cease to react at all.”

JLS

I wonder how humans develop the concept of identity. I am sure the environment in which we live, thrive, and die greatly effects what identities we have. I am curious to what extend the environment plays a role in this development; my guess is our developmental environment completely determines identity. I am white, which I suppose was decided before my existence, but the socially derived concept of being ‘white’ and its effects on my behavior certainly came from the environment.

I cannot help but think of culture and society. I do not know the difference between culture and society. I define culture as repeated patterns of human behavior, but where does society differ? I do not know.

I have pride for the western scientific enterprise. I, over last three years, have interrogated my identities as a scientist, educator, and science educator. I only began this investigation after being supported to critically engage in such work by two graduate students in my teacher preparation program. I previously did not think of how my environment shaped my epistemologies; furthermore, how my culture effects the values I have, which further impact what knowledge I find valid (i.e. what counts as justification for any belief).

I yet again find myself in an existential crisis; my identity as a practitioner of Western science conflicting with my ongoing attempts to engage in critical pedagogy. I have encountered many similar concepts in the education literature, all somehow different, although connected. I first was informed of critical pedagogy by Paulo Freire, in the seminal text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968). Freire called it conscientização; I believe this is where being ‘critical’ originated from, but I may be wrong. Conscientização refers to “learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (1968). Freire develops this idea by looking at classism. His solution, problem posing education and the praxis it supports.

Critical pedagogy seems to be developed into other ideas. Glora Ladson-Billings introduced me to culturally relevant pedagogy (1995). I have heard this concept described as justice-centered science pedagogy by Daniel Morales-Doyle (2017). Maulucci and Fann describe this critical pedagogy as teaching for social justice. In the context of science education, they say it involves sociocultural awareness, meaning specific awareness of the effect Western science can of “concealing important social and historical issues and circumstances that framed the development of scientific knowledge” (Maulucci & Fann, 2016).

How does identity relate to critical pedagogy? Well, from my experience, it is difficult for the oppressers to recognize the oppressive elements of society. It is difficult because it requires the oppressers to reflect on their positionality in the world, their status, their power. This reflection must be followed by action, motivated by the reflection, in which the foundations of social thought have change.

As I reflect, I began to see the world holestically; I question my pride of western science as I uncover more about the histories of the people science has been used to oppress, more about epiestomology, and more about educations purpose. Am I oppressing people in higher education as I teach chemistry? This is my existential crisis; my values are at stake, I feel torn in two.

References

Freire, Paulo. (1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Seabury Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465

Morales-Doyle, D. (2017). Justice-centered science pedagogy: A catalyst for academic achievement and social transformation. Science Education, 101(6), 1034–1060. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21305

Maulucci, M. S. R., & Fann, K. T. (2016). Teaching for Social Justice in Science Education. In L. Avraamidou (Ed.), Studying Science Teacher Identity: Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Explorations (pp. 111–128). SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-528-9_6

While asking faculty members to be on my graduate committee, I quickly drafted an email which outlined my career and its possible future directions. I am surprised by my short description and have included it in full.

I am sorry, I should have given you a little more background. I am a first-year graduate student in Dr. … Lab studying chemistry education research. I got my undergraduate degree in chemistry at … while also being undergraduate research assistant in Dr. … lab. My research at that time was on supporting students in mechanistic reasoning through prompt scaffolding, that is how I got introduced to your work.

I also got my teaching certificate for secondary education while at … Through that process I was introduced to Ambitious Science Teaching, and I challenged many assumptions I had about the purpose of secondary education and the role of expert knowledge in that space.

Right now, I am working on a project looking at supporting faculty in fulfilling their teaching responsibilities by developing materials and new evaluation models. We are attempting to support a culture change in our department, and it is not going well, but I am excited for the upcoming interviews to hear the faculty members perspectives.

I am also sitting in on a Green Chemistry project which I believe will occupy me for the remainder of my time at …. We are attempting to introduce socio-scientific issues around organic chemistry into an organic chemistry laboratory course. I see this as an opportunity to bring in many ideas I formed while in the teacher preparation program. Specifically bringing in socio-cultural issues to inform our curriculum and to be authentic to the lives of students in that process. Furthermore, I have thoughts about how the contextual factors of green chemistry issues may impact the mechanistic reasoning of students and how they can be supported.

JLS

Language, what a complex beast. I can try to bend it to my will, to make it dance, sing, or fly. I can attempt to convey what happened today, yesterday, or what will occur in the future. Do I ever succeed? I suppose that is a question for the reader. The purpose of language is communication, communication of concepts (knowledge/beliefs), justifications, emotions, questions, or information. Therefore the accuracy of spoken/written words is inextricable tried to the reception of those spoken/written words. Let me explain.

I am currently tutoring an Iranian woman. She speaks Persian, I speak English. Communicating with someone who is in the process of learning the language you speak natively is challenging. We work together to understand the complex phenomenon of organic chemistry through the lens of qualitative molecular orbital theory. We use English when communicating; we use English in class, and our textbook is in English. I cannot imagine learning in another language.

I enjoy interacting with people who come from different cultures. When I first met her, she extended her hand to greet me, her palm facing down with her finger’s curved slightly towards her. It felt like I was greeting royalty. She must have noticed my surprise when she commented on it at our next session, while discussing cultural differences. I said it was “classy.” We then spent 5 minutes reaching a consensus on what classy means.

Attempting to understand what the other person is trying to convey, how they have conceptualized words, and how that aligns with your understanding of those words presents frequent obstacles. Furthermore, our reaction to those misalignments determines if we gain some understanding or go deeper into the rabbit hole. By reaction, I mean whether or not we understand, whether or not we can make the connection using context, body language, or tone, whether we can continue the conversation with the belief we are on the same page. Frequently it feels like I say something, then she says something, and then I say no. It feels corrective. This corrective reaction to any communicative misalignment seems antithetical to purpose of education as described by Frerie. However, it seems necessary to gain common ground, essential to the purpose of communication. If you experience a communication breakdown, isn’t only natural to state what you believe is right and wrong, allowing the conversation to continue?

What is green and sustainable chemistry (GSC)? Immediately one thinks of polymers, pollution, recycling, packaging, solvents, aquatic life, toxicity, PFAPs, and many more topics, including the twelve principles of green chemistry developed by Paul Anastas and John Warner in 1998. These principles guide decisions made by chemists to engineer “chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances”(https://greenchemistry.yale.edu/about/principles-green-chemistry). Hazardous not only to humans, but to the planet as well. So, shall students memorize the twelve steps and other related facts to learn green chemistry? No, but perhaps what we know about learning science can assist us with this new adventure.

If we are attempting to guide novices to think like experts, we must have students use their knowledge in similar ways experts do. When we think about science education, we want students to use their knowledge to predict and explain phenomena—the objective of science. GSC uses scientific principles to weigh constrains and benefits, which aligns with engineering more than science. Therefore, we could re-conceptualize GSC education to involve students using their knowledge to make decisions about the reactants, products, and processes involved in a chemical synthesis. These decisions will be impacted by the phenomenon under review and reflect the constraints and goals of the stakeholders. Of course, the phenomenon is not necessarily green, but the decisions about those phenomena will be.
Why incorporate that into a curriculum? Well, our world is on fire, and if we want the next generation of scientists and citizens to make informed decisions regarding the safety of our planet when engaging in chemistry, then preparing students to make those decisions should be a part of our curriculum.

So how do you incorporate a complex socio-scientific issue, such as PFAS exposure, into a curriculum? Well generating a causal mechanistic explanation for such phenomenon is inherently difficult given the context. The molecular-level chemistry may be hidden beneath the many layers that a real-world example brings to the explanatory ‘table’ (Pazicni and Flynn 2019). Furthermore, the context in which student knowledge is activated has implications for what knowledge gets activated and how that activated knowledges gets acted upon. (Hammer et al. 2005)
Scaffolding student activities may be one way to support students in activating knowledge that is productive for the given context. Prior scholarship has shown that scaffolding does impact activation of knowledge, however we do not understand nor have evidence of how scaffolding will impact student knowledge within the context of socio-scientific issues. I am sure some instructors assume that students are incapable of reasoning about such complex issues. However, I disagree.

Before we can support students in developing casual mechanistic explanations, first we must ask, do you need to have students generate a causal mechanistic explanation to make decisions about the greenness of a synthesis? One could have students use an online tool to generate a report about the greenness of specific reactants, solvents, etc., then determine which is greener, all without thinking about the underlying scientific principles at play (Reyes et al. 2023). While such information may be useful, it depends on the subsequent use of and application of the knowledge gained through those online tools. If causal explanations are not formed, then the holistic view of the socio-scientific issues would not be obtained, arguably the main reason for introducing socio-scientific phenomenon. Such a holistic view is often labeled as systems thinking. What is systems thinking? Well, there is no agreed upon definition (Orgill et al. 2019). However, it lies in contrast to a reductionist perspective often taken in the natural sciences. The general idea is to think about all the parts of the phenomenon: the chemical, the social, the legal, the ethical, the cultural. Therefore, I believe that to engage in GSC, one has to engage in systems thinking.

What does that look like? I have no clue.

References

Hammer, D., Elby, A., Scherr, R. E., & Redish, E. F. (2005). Resources, framing, and transfer. In J. P. Mestre (Ed) Transfer of Learning from a Modern Multidisciplinary Perspective., 26.

Orgill, M., York, S., & MacKellar, J. (2019). Introduction to Systems Thinking for the Chemistry Education Community. Journal of Chemical Education, 96(12), 2720–2729. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.9b00169

Pazicni, S.; Flynn, A. B. Systems Thinking in Chemistry Education: Theoretical Challenges and Opportunities. J. Chem. Educ. 2019, 96 (12), 2752–2763. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.9b00416.

Reyes, K. M. D., Bruce, K., & Shetranjiwalla, S. (2023). Green Chemistry, Life Cycle Assessment, and Systems Thinking: An Integrated Comparative-Complementary Chemical Decision-Making Approach. Journal of Chemical Education, 100(1), 209–220. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00647

Science can be classified as a way of knowing, meaning an avenue for generating knowledge. Ways of knowing, or epistemologies in the literature, encompasses all answers to the question, how do you know? For example, when asked what time is dinner? One might say 6:30pm. When asked how you know that one might say my mom told me. In this case, knowledge is generated verbally as discourse occurs between people.

While discussing other ways of knowing in my education philosophy class, I heard a story about an outsider’s experience in a farming community in South America. This outside gained the trust of a particular farmer, enough so that the farmer revealed to this outsider what they know and how they know it. This farmer knew that the upcoming season would be a good one. Not because of any weather report, farmer’s almanac, or outside knowledge, but because the gnomes told him.

I do not believe in gnomes; therefore, I do not believe this farmer engaged in a dialogue with a mythological creature. So how does one resolve this conflict in knowledge. This farmer must feel justified in their statement, simply because it was genuine. Furthermore, I feel justified in my statement. So, do I disregard the farmer’s conviction, labeling them as naive, simple, or idiotic? No, jumping to conclusions would be antithetical to authentic praxis, in the Freirean sense of the word.

One consideration, yet unexplored, is language. Words, depending on who speaks, and in what context, take on different meaning. I do not exactly know what ‘gnome’ means in this context. Gnome may not be a physical entity as a western mind may interpret but may be some other physical manifestation which communicates the nature of that year’s harvest. Possibly it is the visible fruiting of fungi, or the release of a trees seeds, or some other thing. Or maybe it is not a physical entity, but a spiritual or mental one.

Perhaps you are thinking, why I am entertaining the possibility the farmer has gain justification for his beliefs? Well because I do not believe this farmer saw a gnome, but I believe that this farmer is genuine in his conviction. Therefore, there must be some justification for the farmer’s statement.

I cannot help but think of religion. I see no justification for the belief in a god. However, others do. How shall I resolve this conflict of knowledge?

JLS

Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1968. It is considered one of the most influential books on education in the 21st Century. According to Google Scholar, it is the third most cited book in the social sciences. In this book, Freire analyzes education from a critical perspective, meaning, I believe, from a perspective which challenges power structures. More specifically, Freire looks at oppressive structures in society through a classism lens. The word critical is used throughout the book, and is related to praxis, which refers to the action and reflection humans engage in as they attempt to transform their world. This transformation is the ultimate goal of the pedagogy suggested by Freire.

How does one go about transforming the current barriers (or limit-situations) that the oppressed face? Freire posits problem-posing education as a possible road to transformation. He contrasts this with the prominent banking model for education in which students are treated as objects, by which the educational experiences act on them, changing students to hold beliefs and views which keep the oppressed under the oppressors. This is de-humanizing because it removes freedoms owed to the oppressed. In order to overcome this, Freire suggests that we must align our efforts with the peoples’ ontological vocation to become more fully human. Now, I do not know what this means. But I have thought of this as returning the freedoms to the oppressed that have been lost due to their current barriers they face. To do this, we must recognize students as humans with agency, with the capacity to be free, to name, to know; to accomplish this, teachers must incorporate a human’s desire to be free within their pedagogy, restoring the lost freedom.

This is done through problem-posing education and critical praxis, action and reflection on the oppressive problems of the world in order to transform them. The oppressed must come to recognize their situation in the world, thus educators must present these oppressive situations to students as problems to be challenged, through action and reflection. If this action and reflection seeks to overcome power structures, then it is critical. Those who engage in critical praxis are becoming conscientização, or beginning to view the world in ways which uncover inequitable barriers. Is this process of critical praxis human’s ontological historical vocation? I don’t know. Regardless, this action and reflection cannot be done in a prescriptive manner but done with the oppressed. The oppressed capacity to name the world must be restored to align with their vocation for freedom.

When I was reading this book, I could not help thinking of John Dewey. Would he agree with Freire? To me, I see many concepts discussed by Freire which align with Dewey’s view of education. If I remember correctly, Dewey viewed school as an embryonic society, where students develop the necessary skills and capacities for engaging in society (1956). From this view, school and society are not separate entities, but school seeks to replicate society within itself, for the purpose of acting on that society. I think Freire takes this further, focusing on not only acting on society, but transforming it.

References

Freire, Paulo. (1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Seabury Press.

Dewey, J. (1956). The child and the curriculum; and the school and society. University of Chicago Press.

How do you develop an assessment? The National Academies report Knowing What Students Know describes “assessments as an evidentiary argument” (2002). The National Academies outlines an assessment as containing three things: “(1) a model of student cognition and learning in the domain, (2) a set of beliefs about the kinds of observations that will provide evidence of students’ competencies, and (3) an interpretation process for making sense of the evidence”(2001). This is dubbed the assessment triangle. Similarly, in a process called evidence-centered assessment design (ECD), assessment is an evidence-generating tool which can be used to make claims about learning. So, the assessment triangle but more in-depth? I don’t know. Mislevy et al. put forth this design process in 2003, where they commented that although assessments are “embedded in a cultural setting and address social purposes both stated and implicit,” therefore resulting variability, all assessments involve “reasoning that relates the particular things students say or do to what they know or can do as more broadly conceived.” Assessment should serve the learning process, and if the purpose of learning is to learn something useful (such that knowledge will be put to use at a later date), assessment should promote the use of knowledge in future useful contexts. I believe this is referred to as transfer.

Three-dimensional learning (3DL) is something which may help transfer their knowledge to different contexts. I say may and not can because I am unaware of any link between 3DL and transfer; however, empirical evidence we have and the theories we use do point us in that direction, or so I feel justified in claiming. Looking at the assessment triangle, our observation (the assessment & student evidence) is informed by your theory of cognition. 3DL is not a theory of cognition, but it is an activity we are asking our students to engage in, ultimate, to promote expert-like understanding. 3DL is what we are looking for or the observations we hope to make. The expert-novice paradigm is more cognitive theory-like and informs both 3DL and the resources perspective, which is a theory of cognition.

What is a three-dimensional assessment? An assessment which has the potential to elicit evidence of students engaging with the three dimensions (Laverty at el. 2016). Why only potential? There is no guarantee an assessment will engage a student in 3DL. As we know, the structure of the prompt can have an impact on a student’s response. It is possible that students’ resources were not activated, even though they have the productive resources to understand the concept the assessment is testing for (Stowe and Cooper, 2019). So how does one develop a 3DL assessment? Follow ECD. This is an iterative process that involves defining three things: the construct to be assessed (the claim of student understanding), the evidence needed to claim understanding and how that evidence will be interpreted (rubric, item response theory, etc.), and the task designed to elicit that evidence. The construct is defined using the learning objectives and specifies what you want students to know and be able to do, and exactly how you want them to know or be able to do those things. This is where three dimensions enter the picture. In 3DL, students are asked to predict, explain, or model phenomenon; students are using their knowledge in direct relation to a phenomenon. This promotes expert-like understanding had has the potential to provide stronger evidence about student understanding than other popular assessments which ask students to calculate or simply know facts.

JLS

References

Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment. (2001). National Academies Press.

Laverty, J. T., Underwood, S. M., Matz, R. L., Posey, L. A., Carmel, J. H., Caballero, M. D., Fata-Hartley, C. L., Ebert-May, D., Jardeleza, S. E., & Cooper, M. M. (2016). Characterizing College Science Assessments: The Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol. PLOS ONE, 11(9), e0162333.

Mislevy, R. J., Steinberg, L. S., & Almond, R. G. (2003). Focus Article: On the Structure of Educational Assessments. Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research & Perspective, 1(1), 3–62.

Stowe, R. L., & Cooper, M. M. (2019). Assessment in Chemistry Education. Israel Journal of Chemistry.

John Locke is a historical figure. In 1689, he published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where across four books Locke outlines his beliefs that we are born as a blank slate, or tabula rasa, and knowledge is formed from sense-experiences. This idea can be traced back to Aristotle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa). The Essay is Locke’s response to skepticism and follows an epistemological view today I would classify as empiricism. Empiricism seems connected to inductive reasoning, the scientific method, and Aristotle, as opposed to Rationalism which follows deductive reasoning and Plato. Anyways, Locke’s goal was to understand the extent of human’s capacity to know, to avoid unsuccessfully casting “our Thoughts into the vast Ocean of Being.” Locke’s attempt to find “the boundary between the enlightened and the dark Parts of Things,” was to look at experience. Unfortunately, this is as revolutionary as his ideas get for me. He continues in the Essay to take about the primary and second qualities of things. Primary qualities being physical (volume, density, mass, etc.), while secondary qualities being subjective sensory experiences (texture, taste, color, etc.). But we cannot see shape without seeing color, so it seems the perception of either primary or secondary qualities is linked.

The definition of knowledge may help here. I have heard knowledge defined as justified true belief, although I have always thought of it as simply justified belief. The justification is the evidence you use to warrant your belief in something. For Locke, justification must be sensory experience. But the truth comes into play in this definition. What exactly is the truth? It seems Locke was attempting to tease that out with his primary and secondary qualities. For me, I always left the truth out of it. For someone in the social sciences, dealing with different knowledge systems, I encountered many statements which people hold as true, but I find subjective and false. I must have skipped establishing a truth value for physical or chemical things, something Locke spends a lot of time on. Perhaps this is a testament to the time and place Locke formulated his ideas, and the time and place I formed mine. Locke lived in a time when western science was still investigating the nature of matter. Perhaps his distinction of true and false into primary and secondary qualities was informed by his and his colleagues’ experiments into corpuscles. I guarantee my choice to leave out any notion of truth was informed by my work.

JLS

References

Crandell, O. M., Lockhart, M. A., & Cooper, M. M. (2020). Arrows on the Page Are Not a Good Gauge: Evidence for the Importance of Causal Mechanistic Explanations about Nucleophilic Substitution in Organic Chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(2), 313–327. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.9b00815

Freire, Paulo. (1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Seabury Press.

Houchlei, S. K., Bloch, R. R., & Cooper, M. M. (2021). Mechanisms, Models, and Explanations: Analyzing the Mechanistic Paths Students Take to Reach a Product for Familiar and Unfamiliar Organic Reactions. Journal of Chemical Education, 98(9), 2751–2764. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.1c00099

Laverty, J. T., Underwood, S. M., Matz, R. L., Posey, L. A., Carmel, J. H., Caballero, M. D., Fata-Hartley, C. L., Ebert-May, D., Jardeleza, S. E., & Cooper, M. M. (2016). Characterizing College Science Assessments: The Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol. PLOS ONE, 11(9), e0162333. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0162333

A comment made by someone I respect caused me to ponder further on the novice expert paradigm. My original reflection on this topic covered my internal struggle with the novice expert paradigm and the incorporation of student voices in education. One perspective on this paradigm views a comparison of novices to experts as focusing on what students cannot do, reinforcing a deficit perspective of students. My mentor commented that the “hesitation” to center the student perspective in educational experiences “stems from assumptions of novices being incapable,” which sparked further thoughts on this subject.

Incorporating real world phenomenon in science education is one way to get student voices in the conversation, this usually involves eliciting student’s current understanding on how some aspects of the world works. This approach centers phenomenon in educational experiences, turning such experiences into an epistemic journey, full of uncertainty. For example, a teacher could begin a unit on forces and motion by asking students how they could design a car to be safe. Then after eliciting their understanding about crumple zones, air bags, and other such ideas students mention, the instructor could design further educational experiences to investigate those ideas, such as testing different materials for their ability to reduce the impact from a cart on an incline using a force sensor. I have heard educators push back on this approach to science education, claiming that students could not possibly know how to do such things, or understand forces, time, momentum, impulse, or energy. Well, I would disagree, depending on what things we are taking about. For phenomenon that students are familiar with, they are quite capable of asking questions or reaching conclusions. For example, during a unit on stoichiometry, I asked students to think about their impact on the environment thought their personal use of chemicals and materials. Then I asked students to model this impact, giving them guiding questions. One student who often struggled to engage in my class, connected his job as a Starbucks barista to impacting the environment, i.e., food waste disposed of at the end of his shift. Is that not incredible!

But as I said, this depends on what things we are taking about. If I ask that same student to predict and explain the product of a chemical reaction, given the reagents and reaction conditions, they would be unable to draw a possible reaction mechanism. How could they if they did not have any experience with organic reaction mechanisms or the observations which inform the theories of how molecules react. Those observations have been made over centuries and have led to a useful explanatory description of how the world works. How does one acquire such experience?

Well, you could go on an epistemic journey, full of uncertainty, asking questions, gathering evidence, asking more questions, looking for correlations, completing experiments, looking for causation, developing models. Or one could be guided on an epistemic journey by a more experienced individual. This could involve the former list of actions, and possibly experiences that involve listening, copying, following, discussing, asking, answering.

But why would you go on such a journey? To what end? I feel as though this is somehow connected to the purpose of education, the purpose of educational experiences, and the motivation for engaging in such a journey. I do not believe the novice-expert paradigm is an either/or proposition, but in such a dichotomy, there is a continuum. I wonder what others might thing of the dichotomization of knowing. Perhaps there a problem with such a stance in the first place

JLS

Is there such a thing as the nature of science? From my experience the answer is yes, but exactly what that looks like depends on the phenomenon you are investigating. I believe that the purpose of science is to explain and predict phenomenon, and I guess this singular purpose results in a nature of science. If science was for some other reason, then it is possible that the nature of science does not exist. Or maybe the nature of science is inextricably linked with the purpose of science. If the purpose of science changes, so does the nature of science.

I know there are different lens to view phenomenon, which imply different methodologies. A scientist could reduce the world down to “a machine of inert, passive bodies that [move] only through physical causation by direct contact” or action at a distance (Russ et al., 2008). A reductive view, believing in objective reality, which lends itself to quantitative analysis and deterministic discourse. Or a scientist could take the stance that there is no objective reality, believing our interpretation of reality is subjective. Such a view lends itself to qualitative analysis and holistic discourse. A systems perspective, investigating the emergent behavior of a system. Which one should you choose? Well, that depends on the phenomenon and how useful that perspective is to predict and explain that phenomenon. If you are attempting to design a new drug to act on a specific receptor in the body, then reducing the world to atomic and molecular interactions is useful. If you are attempting to design an inclusive learning environment which supports students in learning science, then viewing human behavior as emerging from many uncontrollable factors is useful.

Some scholars focus on the nature of science, centering it within education. Others say it does not exist, and the concept seeks to subjugate the masses. I do not know if I agree with either side. However, I do believe that focusing too much on the methodologies or paradigms science operates under can cause us to lose sight of the story of science. Let us not forget that science is a social enterprise. Any scientific discovery or revelation has a story that goes along with it. This story reflects the human side of science, which is too often separated in our science classrooms. Why not focus on the story of science over the nature of science? How do we know what we claim we do? Who is making the claim, and why them?

References

Russ, R. S., Scherr, R. E., Hammer, D., & Mikeska, J. (2008). Recognizing mechanistic reasoning in student scientific inquiry: A framework for discourse analysis developed from philosophy of science. Science Education, 92(3), 499–525. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20264

It is my understanding that prior to any institutional education, vocational experience was the only education most people would have. Soap makers, printers, masons, carpenters must have required apprenticeships, I know Benjamin Franklin had an apprenticeship as a printer (Franklin, 1791). Being an apprentice was the pathway to a job. Learning the trade from a more experienced individual. Today, apprenticeships are a still part of some career paths. For example, people who work on powerlines require apprenticeships — my partner’s father was a lineman for over 20 years, he had many apprentices. Internships, a similar but different endeavor, is a part of many careers in STEM. Even educational experiences which do not lead towards a job often occur with a more experienced person. In most cultures, elders are respected, holding wisdom, and giving advice to the youth. Throughout time, education has relied on educators. I cannot think of education without educators, nor do I want them separated.

Rarely is human behavior a coincidence, rather we either do or do not have the tools to explain such behavior. Fortunately, there exists empirical data that experts think differently than novices. For example, in the National Research Council’s consensus document on How People Learn, they reported on studies which compared the difference in ability between experts and novices. In one study, expert and novice chess players were asked to reconstruct a chess board from memory after seeing a short glimpse of a chess board in a specific configuration. The configuration was from a random point in a game, it was not completely random. Experts where much better at reconstructing the chess board, putting more chess pieces in the correct positions, when compared to the novices. Surprisingly, if the chess board was randomly configured, so the pieces were scattered on the board in a fashion unlikely to be seen in a real game, experts’, and novices’ abilities to reconstruct the chess board from memory became much closer (NRC, 2000). “Experts have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they noticed and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environment” (NRC, 2000). In other words, their knowledge is organized in productive ways, given the stimuli they have seen and their intended use for such knowledge. This provides the impetus to structure educational experiences so that students can develop more expert knowledge. Thus, three-dimensional learning is born (NRC, 2012).

Some voices in education research argue for departure from the expert novice paradigm, incorporating student knowledge and their emerging understanding as a central piece in the educational experiences. I see value in this, both from a learning perspective, as I assume learning is better when this happens, and from a science perspective, as I assume engaging in epistemic activities with a degree of uncertainty better represents the scientific enterprise. However, I do not know how much we should move away from this paradigm.

References

Franklin, B. (1791). The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

National Research Council. (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. National Academies Press.

National Research Council. (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. The National Academies Press.

What is equity? I do not know. I think it has something to do with money. Given the capitalistic foundations our society is founded upon, I find this conclusion possible. Please, allow me to explain.

When I first learned about equity, I was shown the typical graphic which contrasts equality and equity. The picture is divided into two parts, each part showing a brick wall at a baseball game with three people of various heights standing behind the fence, onlooking toward the athletic spectacle. The first part, representing equality, shows each person standing on a box, all the boxes are the same height. Since the people are of different heights, only those tall enough can see the baseball game, leaving the shortest person blind to the action, despite the added height from the box. The second part, represents equity, in which we see the same scenario, except this time, the boxes are redistributed, so that the tallest person has no box, the second tallest has one box (as before), and the third tallest has two boxes, allowing all three people to see over the wall.

To me, these seems like a textbook definition, one which, to the inquisitive mind, leaves more to desire. Is this a useful way to define equity? It is simple, but is that a bad thing? How does this compare to real life? The wall seems like a great place to start as any other. The wall is a barrier which prevents something, inhibits an action, denies access to the athletic show, restricts the opportunity for some to watch the game. This barrier, given its nature, has predetermined that a select portion of the population will not see the game. This brings us to the people. An identity is a term that categorically describes something about a person, such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, religion/spirituality, nationality, and socioeconomic status. I guess height would fall under ability in this example. Some identities can change, some identities cannot change. I would argue that most are pre-determined, meaning you do not get to choose your identities. Some are determined the moment you are born, such as race, some are determined by the context of your origin, such as socioeconomic status, or even religion. I was born into a Christian culture and for a portion of my life I was identified as a Christian. But now, I am an atheist; I did not choose this, it just happened. I was born believing I was heterosexual, most likely due to the oppression of the non-heterosexual, but now I have realized I am bisexual. Height is both an outcome of genetics and adequate environment/nutrition to realize that genetic potential. My point is this: No one should be denied access to basic rights due to their identities. Of course, those not tall enough to ride a rollercoaster should be denied access, for safety concerns, and since riding is a luxury, not a right, preventing access is not an injustice. But access to public spaces is a right, which brings me back to the wall.

A barrier by nature excludes people. How do barriers arise? They are made by people in power; just like the brick wall, it was made by those of tall height. They did not look beyond their point of view, to consider a shorter perspective and how this wall may affect those of different identities. Even if the consequences are unintentional, the consequences still exist. This is why having people from diverse backgrounds in places of power is critical to prevent more barriers from being created; a diverse group consisting of multiple identities will be better equipped to understand how any action could affect the population. Some barriers are intentional, built by prejudice people in power, for example, segregation laws. More can be said about those who historically have had and continue to have power. White men and their perspectives as white men have permeated our society to its core, specifically regarding the barriers in society. The barriers built by white male ideologies will continue to reproduce a social hierarchy with them on top. The practice of red lining is an example of barriers, imposed by white males, which continue to drastically effect the opportunities some people have.

So how do we prevent barriers from denying access? Equity proposes the re-distribution of resources, so that each person has what is needed for all to have basic human rights. In our example, the boxes are the resources, and who gets what is the redistribution. What does this look like in the messy context of the real world? In education, the allocation of resources, such as funding, should assist those who cannot afford attending a university or college, and those resources should be distributed based on need. Accommodations can be made for those who have learning disabilities or other barriers which impact their learning, such as allowing extra time to complete assignments or exams. I would assume the major barrier to accessing the opportunities provided through a college degree comes from the monetary cost. Why does college cost so much? Or why can some people afford college while others can’t?

Equity does nothing to dismantle the barriers that will continue to reproduce these inequities. This is where the concept of justice enters the picture. In another iteration of our pictorial example, there is a third section which shows the same three people of different heights, but in this image, there are no boxes, instead the brick wall is replace by a chain link fence, allowing anyone of any height to see the baseball game. The barrier to access which caused the inequity was removed, and I believe this is the essence of justice.

How do we remove barriers in postsecondary education? Lowering cost or possibly reparations, I am not an expert, I do not know if anything I have said is useful or will make things worse. But I will continue to ponder if I am upholding the barriers within postsecondary science education or if I am dismantling the barriers within postsecondary science education.

An existentialist in crisis,

JLS

Any education endeavor should have a set of learning objectives (learning goals, performance expectations, etc.) which outline what exactly you want students to learn after having some educational experiences. For education run under government supervision, i.e. public elementary and secondary schools, standards act as those learning objectives. Exactly what those standards are will have large immediate implications for many students and teachers and have lasting effects on society; therefore, standard development should not be taken lightly.

Without standards, the educational experiences students have could be subject to the whims of stakeholders who have the power to alter those experiences to reinforce their own ideologies. For example, the attempts at removing evolution from science courses. Standards could help manage those educational experiences to provide equal opportunities to engage with science. Furthermore, improvement of standards would move those educational experiences towards more productive uses, meaning the time spent in class is more productive for our students, community, and society.

However, any educational experiences will always seek to reinforce a particular epistemology, which is reflected in the learning objectives. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are the current science standards used by twenty states and the District of Colombia. Within these standards, science is portrayed as apolitical, meaning the standards do not address the historical and political role science has played in our society. Without this acknowledgment, science will continue to reinforce neoliberal ideologies that serve the interests of industry (Morales-Doyle et al. 2019). 

A possible strategy to introduce the political nature of science within curriculum is to center instruction around phenomenon which include examples of current social injustice. This serves two purposes. First, by centering science instruction around phenomenon, science is more accurately represented as human endeavor situated in real world contexts. Secondly, science instruction would be more in tune with the interests and problems of our students, encouraging participation for the populations of students who historically have been pushed away from science as a career choice. This strategy can be used alongside current standards, providing an avenue for educators to alter their learning objectives which reflect needs and desires of communities, not just the professional science pipeline fueled by economic greed.

Science does not occur in a vacuum, so we must stop portraying it as such.

An existentialist in crisis,

JLS

References

Morales‐Doyle, D., Childress Price, T., & Chappell, M. J. (2019). Chemicals are contaminants too: Teaching appreciation and critique of science in the era of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Science Education, 103(6), 1347–1366. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21546

In the philosophy of science, in epistemology, a model is a powerful tool; it is a partial representation of a system that can be used to explain and predict phenomena. In chemistry, one of the most powerful models used extensively are skeletal structures, which represent molecules and the atoms and bonds within those molecules. Typically, only molecules which contain covalent bonds are represented using skeletal structures. Each molecule can be named uniquely following the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) convention — IUPAC is an international federation of fifty-five organizations from different nations designed to standardize names, symbols, weights, and measurements within chemistry. The construction of these molecules can be accomplished by following a set of rules. Once constructed, these models contain a large amount of information about the atoms and molecule: hybridization, bond angle, number of bonds between atoms, types of bonds, reactivity, elements present, polarity, relative melting/boiling point, intermolecular forces, acidity/basicity, the potential for resonance, physical properties, geometry/shape, formal charges, number of valence electrons. Other similar models include Lewis Structures, Newman projections, Haworth projections, and Fischer projections, each serving their useful purpose. Models are not without their limitations, as no model can perfectly represent reality. Usually, a model is created to fit a need, to fit an explanation of a phenomenon. But, I do not wish to discuss the information hidden within skeletal structures, rather the names associated with the models of molecules, which possibly will reveal further meaning behind such symbols.

To give credit to one individual for the development of such a model would be absurd. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Gilbert N Lewis, August Kekulé, J.J. Thompson, Ernst Rutherford, Linus Pauling, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Sir John Edward Lennard-Jones, Louis de Broglie, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and many others all played a role in developing both the formalization and information that exists in this model. Attributing such a feat to one person diminishes the countless others who do not get their names in modern chemistry textbooks, such as Jabir ibn Hayyan. This model is an accumulation of evidence and human thought over the generations. Given the role humans played in developing this model, could other meaning be engrained in skeletal structures?

Did you know Linus Pauling was an advocate for eugenics? I was surprised to find out that the person who helped develop our current understanding of the chemical bond supported such a malicious agenda. In 1959, Pauling believed that the human genome was deteriorating. Due to medical advancements, he believed that “defective genes” were not being removed from the collective human genome and that we “have developed feelings of compassion such as to make it possible for us to permit the individuals who carry the bad genes to have more progeny than in the past” (Pauling, 1959). Pauling wrote that people who possess genes which cause sickle cell anemia should have a tattoo placed on their forehead with the purpose of preventing that gene from being passed on to future generations. Pauling also wrote about artificial selection in the context of artificial insemination and expressed that more thought is needed on the question about the selection of donors to improve desirable characteristics in the human race (Pauling, 1968). Pauling justifies his perspective by claiming such actions are necessary to decreasing human suffering. Pauling’s writings can be described as horrific, it is all too easy to spot the oppression supported by western science. For more information about Nobel Prize laureates connected to eugenics, see here.

Are oppressive ideas baked into science models, such as the skeletal structures? If a model is based upon experimental evidence, upon the observations and measurements that are made, then I hesitate to say no. However, experimental results are interpreted, meaning is given to what we observe. Other scientific models have certainly been used to support racists ideas, such as evolution. Some pseudoscientific models were developed to support racist agendas, such as Phrenology. Given the fact that most scientists in the past that developed major scientific models still used to this day were white males, one must wonder if any beliefs that reflect their worldview entered their work. 

I believe they have. The meaning given to what we experience must be related to our prior knowledge about the world, which in turn is affected by our context, the society we grew up in, the ideal our parents had, etc. This is not to say that all scientific models are racist, oppressive, wrong, or un-useful, but to highlight the human component in scientific inquiry. We must engage in critical reflection, especially to those in positions of power. We must reflect on our beliefs, what we use to justify them, and how those beliefs affect other people.

An existentialist in crisis,

JLS

References

Pauling, L. (1959). Molecular disease. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 29(4), 684–687. APA PsycArticles®. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1959.tb00238.x

Pauling, L. (1968). Reflections on the New Biology: Foreword. UCLA Law Review, 15(2), 267–272. HeinOnline.

Any inquiry into human behavior is inherently complex. Even with the tools developed in studying non-human phenomena, the quantification of human behavior is wrought with challenges, there is no true independent variable we can control. Conclusions we attempt to reach with the data we do have is laden with uncertainty. Whether a researcher picks a quantitative, mixed-methods, or qualitative methodology, escaping the complicated nature of human beings is difficult. Why not embrace this complexity? In some attempts that have been made in studying educational environments and learning, qualitative data provides something quantitative data does not, context. Describing the environment in which humans learn seems to be attempting to capture as many variables as possible. While many natural sciences scoff at the idea of qualitative data, stories of the lived experiences of students, teachers, communities are prominent in education literature. This is embodied in a direction some education researchers are moving, those orientated towards epistemology and equity.

In my fragmented understanding of epistemology, justified belief is subjective, what is sufficient and valid justification for a particular belief depends on your purpose in holding those beliefs; therefore, knowledge is situated in a social context and this context dictates your reason for holding such beliefs. This idea has been leveraged against the dominate ways of knowing and doing in science education. More concretely, this idea has been used to challenge who gets to decide what is sufficient and valid evidence, as well as how to collect such evidence. For the past 400 years or so, white men have been dictating what methodologies are valid and what is considered sufficient evidence. If a persons capacity to know is denied or questioned because they do not conform to white epistemologies – because of the context of their life – despite empirical fact, that person experiences epistemic oppression, or as Chanda Prescod-Weinstein described it, white empiricism (2020, p. 425-426). If you are skeptical this even occurs, then I suggest you read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In this book, Robin describes the resistance she experienced proposing a valid methodology in collecting samples but was denied her capacity to know because it was not ‘real’ science.

A general response to this oppression is to elevate the status of other ways of looking at the world, without devaluing mainstream practices of science. Relational epistemologies are one such approach. A relational epistemology is a theory of knowing, developed from the literature studying Indigenous knowledge systems, that acknowledges all entities, human and non-human, exist in a reciprocal dynamic relationship (Pugh et al., 2019, p.427). It seems to me that relational epistemologies recognize the world is a complex place and each entity influences one another. So instead of isolating entities, the complexity of the world is embraced. Is this not a qualitative view of the world? Is this not valid?

An existentialist in crisis,

JLS

References

Prescod-Weinstein, C. (2020). Making Black Women Scientists under White Empiricism: The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 45(2), 421–447. https://doi.org/10.1086/704991

Pugh, P., McGinty, M., & Bang, M. (2019). Relational epistemologies in land-based learning environments: Reasoning about ecological systems and spatial indexing in motion. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 14(2), 425–448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-019-09922-1

If a flood washed away a town, would you attribute this disaster to meteorologic patterns or an act of god? Would you attribute this flood to any causal chain existing independent of you, or would you interpret such an event because of some mechanism in which you are an immediate participant, resulting in the flood (i.e., sin, karma)? If you had a loved one that perished in the flood, would it chain your perspective on the matter? Possibly feeling the irrationality of death, would you attribute such an unexplainable event to a similarly unexplainable mechanism? 

Why ask these hypothetical questions? To determine if you believe in an objective or subjective reality. Let me explain. Over the past month I have been contemplating what I think I know and how I know those things. Given my position as an education researcher, my obsession with knowledge should be unsurprising. How I view knowledge and knowledge formation will have drastic implications for both my teaching and research.  Upon reflection, I hold observation and measurement in the highest regard for building knowledge. Science is a way of knowing which I believe to give the most accurate description of reality, the closest we can get to some semblance of truth. If your claims do not align with observed patterns, then I do not believe you. The patterns I see, and the accuracy gained through measurement are the justifications for making the claim that I know something. Given my position as a scientist, should this surprise you? Call me an empiricist, a positivist, see if I care. Some philosophers and scientists would disagree with me, arguing against a reality outside of the human mind, the naturalists. I hold that observations and measurement are my justifications because other justifications deny rationality and the knowledge claims they allow me to make are extremely useful for deciphering and analyzing the world. This view of knowledge has allowed others, like me, to explain and predict phenomenon, leading to all the great marvels of the information age. Maybe that makes me a pragmatist.

However, usefulness is subject to the intended use, which in turn, is subject to the user. Perhaps some people have other uses for the knowledge claims they make; therefore, their justification of some knowledge claims will look quite different from mine own.  If a person were attempting to run from this absurd reality, run from an unexplainable lose, an explanation or solution which involves neither observation nor measurement would seem logical if that knowledge claim serves them — they may invoke any justification necessary. This is where god enters the picture. If people are motivated to run from the human condition, to find ways to escape the inevitable realization life is meaningless, then justifications are thrown to wind, people leap from one knowledge claim to the next without answering to the observable and measurable. Any god or religion serves people in eluding absurd reality and serves them by allowing those people to place meaning on an otherwise meaningless world. It allows them make claims which are not answerable to anyone, these claims are not falsifiable. Is it possible that a god created that flood to smite the people of that town? Do I believe this? No, because I have recognized that this world holds no meaning. If that is true, why not kill yourself? Because suicide does not resolve the conflict between the absurd natural of reality and man’s encounter with it, suicide reaffirms the absurd, giving into the meaninglessness of the world (Camus, 1942). I must not give into death, but entertain death. I must exist despite everything. I must revolt against my existence, against the path of eluding the absurd.

An existentialist in crisis,

JLS

References

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Translation originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. Originally published in France as Le Mythe de Sisyphe by Librairie Gallimard, 1942. https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/ phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf

Experience in the classroom was by far the most impactful experience of my teacher preparation program. This is where our preparation, our hypotheses, came into contact with the real world, with all its idiosyncrasies and nuances. With that being said, if it was not without a strong philosophical foundation, or if it was not without struggling with the large philosophical questions regarding education during our course work, the internship would not have been as impactful. From a more scientific perspective, I got to observe a real world school, talk to practicing teachers, and students who operate within these schools. These observations revealed a lot about teachers and students own thoughts about what there were supposed to be doing and their reasoning behind those actions/thoughts. I got to learn a lot about the teacher identities and student identities as I interacted with the people around me. Especially since I knew I was not directly entering the secondary education teaching profession, I looked at the internship as an opportunity to observe how a school operates – at least the one I interned at.

Moments that I can remember as especially revealing were ones in which my philosophy of teaching (which informs my practice) came into conflict with others expectations, both teacher and students alike. Eventually, I came to the conclusion or conviction that I was not going to attempt to overall another teachers classroom with my practice, at the end of the day, this was not my classroom, and I did not hold much weight in the science department meetings, or at least I did not want too. I did not want to alter how science was being taught in that high school. I did in many ways, it was evident in my lesson planning, when I did have the opportunity to plan lessons which looked more or less like something of my own creation. My focus turned from teaching science in the best way possible to teaching science in the most fun way I could imagine. This mostly included labs (chemistry labs) or demonstrations in which students got to participate with hands on activities. By far the most fun lessons – which I can only assume from the reactions of the majority of my students – where those including fire. Burning steel wool was especially captivating.

An existentialist in crisis,

JLS

Why start a blog? What do I hope to accomplish?

As an educator, I hope to provide people with useful information ­- useful if this information somehow alters their worldviews or provides actionable information. As a researcher, I hope to improve my communication skills by writing for an audience, which may force myself to scrutinize my writing more than I normally would.

An existentialist in crisis,

JLS