This morning Joe Palca, the NPR science reporter, interviewed a U of Florida plant biologist about growing more tastier tomatoes. The biologist, Harvey Klee, noted that tomato growers were rewarded for size of their tomatoes and yield of their crops. “Flavor is irrelevant,” he said. You see size and yield are easily measured and counted, [...]
“Joinery” refers both to the craft of a joiner, someone who makes things by joining together pieces of wood, and to the premises from which the craft is practiced.
Measurement
“Too many standards, too little time” writes a teacher with
40 years of experience. In a blog by ContraCosta Times education reporter, the teacher, Steven Weinberg writes:
Having written previously about ways education has improved in the 40 years since I began teaching, I would like to address one change that I do not believe has been beneficial: the attempt to make “content standards” the basis [...]
Gerald W. Bracey, defender of public education…
This afternoon I returned home from a work session. Had some more forms to fill out and return to Vandy. Then I turned to my email that had accumulated since this morning. Read the notice from the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado that Jerry Bracey died Tuesday night in [...]
Been re-reading Ramalingam, et al’s Exploring the science of complexity…
to identify some measures and descriptive information we could use and gather for an evaluation project. Measurement methods such as sociograms— to see who is connected to who, particularly in terms of feedback and feedback processes; social network analysis (SNA)— to look at possible emergent properties of the networks; questions to use in structured [...]
Here are some biases I am aware that I fall prey to …
Information bias and Planning fallacy. Big time for the latter. I know evaluators and researcher often succumb to Confirmation bias, Déformation professionnelle, and Experimenter’s or Expectation bias. We, evaluators, often interview and survey others as to why they chose or did certain things. They may select among the options given, when, in reality, their decisions [...]
This “is your brain on magnets- or maybe not”: from yesterday’s slashdot discussions
conspirator23 writes “Jon Hamilton of National Public Radio brings us a story about [0]‘voodoo correlations’ in fMRI studies that seek to learn more about emotional states, personality, and social cognition in the human brain. Many of us outside the scientific community have been treated to fascinating images of brain activity and corresponding explanations about how [...]
Guilt and shame, accountability and evaluation?
I’ve held the suspicion that as much as anything an evaluation unit serves as the moral consciousness of an organization. This may account for why some administrators do not know what to do with evaluators or misuse them. This suspicion was reinforced for me this weekend after reflecting on the week’s events and readings. I [...]
Data and measurement needs of a coalition
“If a judge or commission member knows there are people in the community caring and that show up to the meetings, then they will very likely make totally different decisions.”
Mrs. Camilla Bibbs-Lee was telling us a story to describe the multiple strategies of the Hamilton anti-drug coalition. We were sitting in her office, which doubles [...]