antici

I'm passing the time before F. and I leave for LA. First I was at work, but I couldn't concentrate, so I went home. But everything that can be packed has been packed, so I'm not sure what to do here either. Also! My shirts arrived today. I dress so snappy.

Yesterday in my teaching class, we discussed an article about the effects of unexamined assumptions on the classroom environment. Teachers can assume things about how learning works, the effectiveness of certain teaching methods, and even their relationship to their students and their schools. We talked about some kinds of assumptions that can be accidentally harmful. For instance: "teaching is a vocation, a calling, and I would do it for nothing." This one makes teachers feel good about themselves for being teachers, but also creates an obligation to put up with being overworked and earning low salaries. It also can make teachers profoundly guilty for not being constantly elated about their jobs. (Just like the similar assumption that everyone who is a mother loves being one.)

We also discussed some assumptions that were not mentioned by the article, and one of them was particularly interesting to me. I think engineering departments assume that "engineering education is intended to prepare students to be useful to their employers." At first this didn't seem so unusual, but I think in other disciplines it's more common for students to study the subject for its own sake, or because they want to put it to their own personal use. Literature, math, and languages are all subjects whose faculties think students are studying for more intrinsic reasons.

I think assuming that the purpose of engineering education is utility to corporate interests is particularly harmful, because educators are assuming that students aren't intrinsically motivated. It may even imply that students shouldn't be intrinsically motivated. Students tend to catch on to and adopt the assumptions of their instructors, so I think this assumption is likely to lead to students who don't have a personal stake in the profession. I don't think having a financial stake in it (in the form of a future job) counts the same way; in that sense the pressure to get good grades is a little bit like economic coercion. So when teachers assume students are studying the subject just to get jobs, the students themselves may be more likely to view their work as uninteresting and not personally relevant.

All registered athletes are in the list below

I leave for the Pan Ams this Thursday evening. My matches will be sometime Friday afternoon. I'm so excited! Now I have to go work out.

technology works as designed

I went for a run this morning with my new iPod. It was a lot easier and more fun than running with no music! Just like it's supposed to be! I wish the headphones had a clip, though -- the weight of the wire bouncing around sometimes causes them to wiggle out of my ears.

intrinsic aptitude my ass

I'm working on the references for the final project in a class on "College Teaching and Academic Careers." The project is a research proposal about classroom research; I'm writing mine about gender differences in participation styles. Having noticed that women often don't raise their hands and are more passive when doing group work, I want to come up with and test what I've named "low-stakes participation."

The whole thing seems to be a problem of confidence - active participation in class and small groups both builds and requires confidence. So maybe lowering the confidence requirement for participation will help train students (and women in particular) to be more confident in their ability.

Anyway, the article I am reading right now (Felder et al., "A longitudinal study of engineering student performance and retention: III. Gender differences in student performance and attitudes") keeps dropping bombs like this:

The converse question was also posed, i.e., what the most likely reason would be if the students performed above their expectations in the course (Table 10). Hard work was cited by the highest percentages of both men and women, but men were consistently more likely to report their own ability as the most likely factor while in four of five courses women were more likely to cite help or support from someone else. These attribution patterns match those observed by Fennema and Leder [25], who found that female mathematics students tend to attribute failure to themselves and success to help from others while male students tend to do the opposite.

Later on:

In the second semester of their senior year, the men remaining in the experimental course sequence were twice as likely as women to feel that they did more than their fair share in their groups and the women were significantly more likely to feel that their contributions were undervalued or ignored by other group members. This feeling is similar to one expressed by female Radcliffe College students, who reported that too often their contributions in small mixed study groups were not valued and so they preferred to study by themselves.

Yikes. And this, from a different article:

[Jacquelynne Eccles] found that even though girls got better math grades than boys, parents of daughters reported that math was more difficult for their child than parents of sons. For the math success of boys, parents rated talent and effort as equally important. For the math success of girls, parents said hard work was much more important than math talent. Ultimately, these young women have a lower opinion of their abilities in math and science and in their general intellectual abilities, even though they average higher college GPAs than young men.

And!

While boys quickly jump into a role and compete with one another to get their colleagues' attention and admiration, girls want to be in a group with people they like, and tend to wait to be invited or encouraged to assume roles.

Multiple sources and situations point to symptoms of the same disease. Lack of confidence and passivity are more common in women than in men, and they contribute negatively to learning.

Everyone agrees that group work is good, but how can instructors make sure confident students don't steamroll timid ones? In discussions with the whole class, the instructor can be there to guide the discussion and ask for contributions from students that need to be invited to participate. Small groups don't have the benefit of a facilitator like that.

Speedy!

I don't want to jinx it, but I think the weather has warmed up for good now. Even the ten-day forecast is in the 50s and 60s. Great news, because I just fixed my bike like you would not believe.

I'd been riding around with worn-out back brakes for a month or so - I could only use the front ones. Horribly unsafe, I know. This weekend I replaced the brake pads, and it's amazing how fast I can stop.

A week or so ago, it also came to my attention that there was some shifting trouble. I noticed the cable going into the shifter looked a little frayed, so at first I just tried replacing that. But the shifter itself had a very tiny, very important plastic nub broken off on the inside. This must have happened at some point before I noticed the problem (perhaps due to overzealously trying to shift) or maybe even while I was taking it apart to replace the cable. I spent the weekend messing with cables before I realized the shifter was broken, but it was absolutely no trouble to replace yesterday.

Last night I zipped over to Bdon's house and was reminded of the difference a sealed bottom bracket makes. Some things are so quietly good that you can only notice them when everything else is working properly.

I also got myself some fun bike accessories: a bell, so I don't have to ruin my bike-mood by shouting "get off the bike path" at people; a helmet that fits my head right, so I don't have to feel guilty for not wearing the old one that would just fall off anyway; and a great new red windbreaker that isn't intended specifically for cycling but works fabulously. It's even cut long in the back so my lower back doesn't get cold.

At work yesterday I mentioned my shifter story to R. (because I had the replacement in my bag at the time) and she said, "You take really good care of your bike, don't you?" People are surprised when you are a bike commuter and take good care of your bike, but nobody blinks when drivers take good care of their cars.

The thing is, I have to take good care of my bike. If I let something on my bike stay broken, it's unpleasant to ride, and then I'd rather just take the bus. Ewwwww, the bus. If I could make it more pleasant to ride in the winter, I'd even do it then. Not when there's snow in the road, though, because I'm worried about skidding. Maybe some ski goggles and one of those face hoods would help the rest of the time. My main problem is the killer wind.

Speaking of unpleasant to ride, Matt's bike was broken for more than a year before he even tried to fix it. He'd been in a crash, and I guess when he fell he landed on the frame and bent it. It was not repairable. But before he got a shop to look at it, he was in limbo and couldn't start the process of preparing to replace the fallen soldier. G. has a book about motivation, and one of the interesting facts in it is that if you promise to help people but put them on a waiting list, the people on the waiting list actually improve more slowly than people who express interest but don't get put on a waiting list. Basically, if you tell them to wait before you'll help them, they won't help themselves in the meantime. But people who are not waiting will improve on their own. Matt's bike feelings were, I think, a little like that. He threw it away Saturday night. All that's left is the front wheel, which we kept in case I ever screw mine up. Pour one out for a faithful old bike, y'all.

Completely ridiculous

Some people don't believe me when I say this is a real thing that actually happens.

exhaustion

I would be really good at this if it was just the daytime stuff I was supposed to do. But even now I am expected to be working. I won't!

whoa!

This article is awesome. But this quote is disturbing.

...But it never occurred to me there was anything I could do physically to protect myself. Why? Not because I was drunk. Because literally no one my whole life had told me that my body could work in my own defense (and many, many messages had told me to the contrary).