Thanks very much for your comments Dewy. I welcome this response,
coming as it does about 3 years from the publication of my critical
paper in the journal of Chemical Education which was received by
chemical constructivists with complete silence. Dudley Herron did
send me a message saying he wished to respond in print but has shown
no signs of doing so. Please take a look at my paper if you havn't
already.
E.R. Scerri, Philosophical Confusion in Chemical Education, Journal
of Chemical Education, 80, 468-474, 2003.

I would be happy to send you a pdf file of the article.

I would also very much welcome a commentary on the special issue
which could be published as soon as possible in Foundations of
Chemistry in order to take this discussion to a higher level as you
suggest.

With all respect to Keith Taber's tireless efforts on this medium, I
don't think that an Internet discussion list such as this one is the
place to conduct the discussion.

regards,
eric scerri


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The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance, by Eric Scerri,
Oxford University Press, 2006.
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On Oct 14, 2006, at 11:24 AM, Dewey Dykstra wrote:

> The notes quoted below are from the learning-science-concepts group
> at yahoogroups.co.uk. The following is a commentary on them.
>
> I have now read about half, maybe a bit more, of the materials in the
> Foundations of Chemistry (FoC) issue mentioned below, including the
> opening editorial and the first several articles. It strikes me that
> notes such as the one below by Scerri and many of the articles in
> this issue are very good examples of a failure to advance the
> discussion in any way that even remotely resembles academic and
> intellectual ideals many imagine we all ascribe to. Intellectual
> civility is but one problem that comes to mind, in the issue of FoC
> and certainly in the note below.
>
> The failure is on several counts...
>
> 1. What is represented as constructivism has little resemblance to
> principled efforts to describe it. One of the most principled
> efforts has been that of Ernst von Glasersfeld (It is interesting to
> note that his name is consistently misspelled by at least one author
> in the issue and this is apparently not picked up on and corrected in
> the editorial process). The consequence, as with others such as
> Matthews, is that a target is *wherever* one aims. Convenient for
> the authors, but anyone who really bothers to consider the nature of
> what they are railing against one realizes that the "disprove
> constructivism" authors are railing against nearly any idea that
> differs from their own. Hardly, an approach to favorably affect the
> thinking of someone looking critically at the arguments.
>
> 2. Possibly the most fundamental problem is a logical error which
> renders typical efforts to "prove constructivism wrong." Those lines
> of reasoning not garbled by aiming at the "it's everywhere" target
> essentially boil down to: constructivism violates basic tenets of
> realism. Big surprise, since carefully developed notions of
> constructivism were developed out of conscious rejections of some of
> these basic tenets of realism. These principled efforts should not
> be expected to be consistent with views held by realists.
>
> Sadly, most of those arguing against constructivism never seem to
> realize this and take the basic tenets of realism as given. Sure
> there are those in whose writing and actions basic tenets of their
> claimed constructivism are not in evidence. Such is also the case in
> the field of Newtonian mechanics, a topic taught widely in physics.
> The state of understanding and the apparent lack of complete internal
> consistency renders the chances of students developing deep
> understanding to nearly nil. Yet, we do not attack Newtonian
> mechanics on this basis.
>
> If the debate along these lines were instead to focus on comparison
> of the basic tenets in a way that both sides were convinced the other
> understood the nature of the bases of constructivism and realism, the
> resulting discussion would indeed be a breath of fresh air in the
> situation. Of course, the outcome of thoughtful attention to the
> issues at this level is generally that the basic assumptions of a
> view are generally beyond the point of being provable or disprovable.
>
> 3. More than half way thru the issue FoC, I have yet to see any
> reference to data to support the arguments. (Articles with data in
> them no doubt are referenced, but not for evidence from or of data.)
> The most dramatic, unequivocal statements made against constructivism
> seem to appeal to authority, the authority of science. Yet, as the
> lead article points out, science claims to distinguish itself from
> other fields because it does not accept authority. How can
> proponents defend themselves then by appeal to authority?
>
> While claims in the FoC issue are that constructivism has "taken
> over" science education, it is simply not the case that
> constructivism prevails either in textbooks or the classroom
> practices of most teachers in English speaking countries around the
> world. But, even if one does not believe this statement, one merely
> need to look at science education before the advent of
> constructivism. The discussion using the term, constructivism, in
> science education seems to have arisen in the 80's. (No, Kuhn was not
> constructivist. A very good description of the body of Kuhn's work,
> endorsed by Kuhn is Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions by Paul
> Hoyningen-Huene, University of Chicago Press, 1993.) Evidence of the
> effects of instruction in science have been recorded in an extensive
> body of academic work.
>
> There is an excellent bibliography of work in the area of student
> understanding of the phenomena taught in science. It currently has
> nearly 7000 entries (back to 1903) and can be found at: <http://
> ipn.uni-kiel.de/aktuell/stcse/stcse.html>. A major finding is that
> in standard instruction students generally leave the instruction with
> the same understanding they came to class with and that understanding
> is fundamentally different than intended in the instruction. In this
> work there are examples of efforts which do explicitly attempt to
> take the basic tenets of carefully thought out constructivism into
> account in which major changes in the understanding of the students
> is observed. It seems strange that data about learning science seems
> so studiously avoided in discussion of the educational implications.
>
> 4. There are a number comments which suggest the authors' view of
> the purpose of chemistry teaching. The purpose seems to be the
> selection and training of chemists and other scientists. I strongly
> suspect this does not sound much like education to many readers. If
> this is the purpose of chemical education, what justification is
> there for subjecting all of society to this vocation specific process
> when most of society will not be chemists or scientists and do not
> intend to in the first place? Shouldn't we restrict such vocational
> selection and training to the group of students who come to us
> indicating they want to major in our fields?
>
> 5. Except for their specific reference to chemistry education, so
> far in the issue all of the anti-constructivism arguments made seem
> to have been made and published already in other publications, such
> as those by D. C. Phillips and M. Matthews referenced frequently in
> the FoC issue. In the FoC issue there are a few insightful
> suggestions as to things that can and should be investigated.
> Taber's discussion, which is not attempting to disprove
> constructivism, is ironic given the introductory editorial and the
> articles that follow.
>
> An example of a principled effort to describe a constructivist view:
> a. "Knowing without metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical
> Constructivist position" Ernst von Glasersfeld, available at <http://
> www.kjf.ca/17-TAGLA.htm> on the Karl Jaspers Forum <http://
> www.kjf.ca/>
> b. Radical Constructivism: A way of knowing and learning by Ernst
> von Glasersfeld, Falmer Press, 1996.
>
> For an example of an extended examination of constructivism involving
> many scholars and which does meet high standards of scholarship,
> consult: Constructivism in Education, L. Steffe and J. Gale (eds),
> Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.
>
> The intellectual capacity surely exists to move the discussion to a
> truly scholarly plane. The result of such a move would likely be
> better science education and deeper understanding of our respective
> professions. Isn't it time we moved the discussion in this direction?
>
> Dewey Dykstra
>
> On Oct 13, 2006, at 11:54 PM, cestsi04 wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>> As I recently mentioned the current issue of Foundations of
>> Chemistry is a special issue
>> devoted to Chemical Education and Constructivism. It includes a
>> very interesting article by
>> Keith Taber.
>>
>> Talking of different senses of 'constructivism' I attended a talk
>> at the most recent ACS
>> meeting in San Francisco in which a young woman speaker seemed to
>> have a very strange
>> notion of what the term means.
>>
>> She informed the audience of how she was planning to conduct a
>> questionnaire with her
>> students and that she expected them to respond that science
>> progresses via scientists first
>> performing experiments and then arriving at theories. She then
>> paused significantly for
>> audience approval which she of course obtained given that most
>> chemical educators in the
>> US have been brainwashed into thinking that this is what
>> distinguishes a constructivist
>> from a non-constructivist.
>>
>> Non constructivists and other objectionable people according to
>> this mistaken view,
>> believe in induction. They believe that objective experiments come
>> first and then one
>> arrives at theories and laws.
>>
>> A constructivists according to this mistaken view is anybody who
>> objects to a positivist
>> approach to such a positivist approach to science.
>> But Popper objected to positivism and you certainly would not call
>> him a constructivist
>> given the criticism he poured on Kuhn one of the architects of true
>> constructivism,
>> meaning the view scientific knowledge is constructed not discovered
>> and that social
>> factors dictate theory choice rather than an independently existing
>> world accessible
>> through experiments.
>>
>>
>> And it looks to me that Keith is heading in the same sort of
>> direction. Of course like most
>> sensible educators, but not all incidentally*, he distances himself
>> from relativism but still
>> he seems to equate constructivism merely with an opposition to
>> positivism. I think this is
>> a mistake Keith.
>>
>> *An example of a constructivist chemical educator who is even happy
>> to count himself as a
>> relativist is George Bodner, a much cited author in this field and
>> in my view also
>> thoroughly confused and philosophically naive.
>>
>>
>> Eric Scerri,
>> UCLA
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> Eric Scerri's, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance,
>> OUP, 2006.
>> (due to appear in the UK on Nov 1st)
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>



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