Cons of Participation Grades 2
Continuing my previous post (which I unfortunately must do in installments due to my schedule) here is another common criticism of grading participation. 2. It is nebulous. What exactly does participation mean? A strong criticism of participation-based grades is that participation itself is a nebulous concept. There are a wide …
Cons of Participation Grades 1
There are better and worse ways to assess students and participation is no exception. Some teachers use a “participation grade” as a justification to assign grades based on how much they like students. Obviously, that is not a good grading practice. However, there are others who use participation to assess …
Curse of Knowledge
Regarding my previous post on the lack of accessibility of critical thinking information, even Carl Sagan’s Cosmos has this problem. Despite being hailed as supremely understandable for general audiences (both the book and the series), I found that it also posed too many challenges in its basic linguistic accessibility to …
An Aspect of Accessibility
Since “accessibility” has so many different meanings in education, let me start by clarifying that I am referring to students (and general audiences) being able to access the meaning of information they encounter. This seems to be a weak point in the skeptic, atheist, and critical thinking movements, and something …
The Introspection Illusion
We’re great at spotting biases in others, but absolutely incompetent at finding them in ourselves. Even if we know exactly what to look for and we’ve got a ton of intellectual humility, noticing the effects of our own biases on our own thoughts is like looking for colored glasses while …
Recent Comments
{ Hey, the really bad ones are when people accept "groups/journals I've never heard of" over "well-known entities". *cough*NAISA*cough* } – May 23, 7:22 PM
{ The very first thing that struck me when I read about this, was not the possibility of it being a vanity journal, though I guess... } – May 23, 11:38 AM
{ Mailed rejection letters? How quaint! Now they just never contact you, forcing you to spend weeks or months checking via backchannels and anonymous wikis to... } – May 05, 4:41 PM
{ Ouch! The solace I can offer is that now I can look back on my box of 100+ rejection letters (they used to mail you... } – May 05, 3:21 PM
{ The skeptical movement is well aware of how much so called "published things about science" is wrong. A good example of this is one experiment... } – Apr 17, 12:50 PM
{ I'm sorry that I just don't have time to have a full discussion with you, but I don't want you to feel ignored so I'll... } – Apr 10, 4:49 AM
Education
Curse of Knowledge
Regarding my previous post on the lack of accessibility of critical thinking information, even Carl Sagan’s Cosmos has this problem. Despite being hailed as supremely understandable for general audiences (both the book and the series), I found that it also posed too many challenges in its basic linguistic accessibility to …
Critical Thinking
Why Schools Should Teach Critical Thinking (Final)
This is part five (the end) of a rebuttal to this article. Part one can be found here. There are just two more points I need to address in Hendrick’s article before I am done with my rebuttal. I know, all two of you readers have been waiting with bated …
Pedagogy
Cons of Participation Grades 2
Continuing my previous post (which I unfortunately must do in installments due to my schedule) here is another common criticism of grading participation. 2. It is nebulous. What exactly does participation mean? A strong criticism of participation-based grades is that participation itself is a nebulous concept. There are a wide …
Culture
The Intentionality Fallacy
If you lookup “intentionality fallacy” you’d probably find a lot of references to literature and other arts, since that is its usual context. We need to start talking about it in other things too. For example, everything. In brief, the intentionality fallacy happens when you are trying to understand, interpret, or …
