There is a very old, fundamental distinction between science and practice. Humans adopted techniques for using fire long before humans developed a physics of combustion. Throughout history human inventions have advanced our successful techniques while scientific investigations have developed our understanding. This dualism of technology and science across all the disciplines raises the question of the relationship between success and understanding. That relationship between technology and science exists as the educational practices of public schooling and the sciences of developmental psychology and epistemology. More specifically, it exists between state testing programs and psychometric theory.
We might assert
that the two don’t necessarily interact, that educators and teachers who test
students don’t necessarily have to understand the probabilistic, statistical
mathematics of IRT. Practitioners can use the statistical technology by applying
the testing program of the state without knowing how exactly it works. But a
problem arises if we challenge what is being tested when we ask why does IRT work,
how does it work? For example the practical problems of saccadic jumps in
student development and concept-based knowledge development naturally appeal to
Wilson’s work on ability intervals and Trevor’s notion of unidimensionality.
What we know
about success and understanding is that the relationship is not constant.
Sometimes practical, technical success leads understanding as it clearly does at
earlier stages while at later stages of development, science leads technique. Even
within specific cases, the relationship may oscillate between which one
stimulates development. A recent example shows this intimate relationship
between doing and knowing. Biogen Inc. and Eisai Co. reported their drug
aducanumab failed testing for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The
theoretically it is the buildup in the brain of a sticky
substance called Beta amyloid plays a pivotal role in the disease so now drug
researchers say “they need to go back to the drawing board in search of an
effective treatment.” The aducanumab studies’ failure “should be the
final nail in the coffin” for the hypothesis, Baird analyst Brian Skorney said
in a research note titled, “The Death of Beta Amyloid—Where Do We Go Now?”
On the other
hand, many famous practical discoveries—the extreme power unleashed in a steam
engine piston with rapid condensation—preceded advancements in scientific
understanding and technology. Thus, the practical discoveries at early stages (fire,
tool use) and the later development of theoretical understanding by models that
predict empirical findings and technological uses.
The situation we
face in Oregon public schooling is the relationship between the practical
matters of standards and testing exemplified by the ODE and the advancements of developmental psychology and
scientific epistemology which serves as is corresponding science. However, if
the ODE limits itself to finding what works then it restricts itself to purely
practical matters that remain immune to understanding due to research. We can
see this denial of science by the ODE in its economic valuation of research by
examing how much of its budget is devoted to research which is nothings. Even
conceptually, the idea of coupling research with a state charter policy was
immediately rejected by policy makers. Lab schools, r&d schools, even the NW
Regional Labs have never been valued for their potential impact. Neither the
standards much less the testing documentation show evidence of a pursuit of
research findings.
The conclusion must be this question: If the natural
relationship between science and technology exists in other fields such as
medicine and physics, and is to be found throughout human history, why is
public schooling so abnormal in its denial of science upon which to base its
understanding? Why exactly is it so bereft of research? Or to take one specific
example, why does the ODE in its standards and testing so completely ignore any
research into the development of students’ understanding of place value
numeration?
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