Garth D. Benson

Arrows in time: The misapplication of chaos theory education

This paper analyzes the role of chaos theory in educational theory and research and asks whether or not the principles of the theory can inform education. We contend that the application of the theory to education is misguided. The complexity of human behaviour is not adequately accounted for in the theory and the original assumptions governing chaos theory were not created to account for human behaviour. In the argument an analogy is used to suggest that the education chaoticists are committing an error similar to the behaviourists who use stimulus-response principles in education. Behaviourism is a misapplication of positivistic philosophy and, likewise, educational chaoticists make an equivalent leap of logic from using chaos theory as a perspective to concluding that chaos theory has all the answers for education. We argue that it is not necessary, nor is it useful, to introduce chaos theory to understand education when we already have Whiteheadian process philosophy and constructivism to account for ...

Scientific thought as dogmatism

In science, positivism has had a major impact on how we see the world. It has resulted in the belief that there is only one true answer to a question, all answers are knowable, and that those answers may be combined into a single coherent theory. The authors argue that positivistic thought has mischaracterized the dialectical process and that positivism results in dogmatic thought. The suggestion is made that a more appropriate way of understanding the development of thought is to interpret the activity of knowing as a series of syntheses rather than dramatic resolutions.

Perspectives on the unity and integration of knowledge

Contents: Allen R. Utke: Introduction: The (Re)Unification of Knowledge: Why? How? Where? When? - Donald A. Crosby / Charles R. Smith: Nature and Human Nature: Impacts and Implications of Science Since 1859 - Garth Benson: The Integrative Role of Why Questions in Science - Ronald Glasberg: Objective Science as the Subjective Projection of Culture onto Nature: Rethinking the Problem of Enlightenment - Allen R. Utke: Faraday Is the Answer: What Is Your Interdisciplinary Question? - Peter Staples: The Integration of Knowledge in Ecumenical Science - Georges Helal: Conditions for Religious Progress in the Contemporary Developed World - John L. Mahoney: Literature and Religion: Theory to Practice - Leslie Owen Wilson: Milestones: Integrating the Celebratory Elements of Individual Achievement and Family Tradition into the Curriculum - Charles Elkins / Robert Hogner / Felice Lifshitz / Joe Wisdom: InterdisciplinaryTeaching: Intertextuality or Strange Attractors? - Ellen Weber: A Multiple-Intelligence View of Learning at the High-School Level - Uri Zoller: The Integrated Structure, Content, and Methods Approach in HOCS-Oriented Teacher Education - Bryant Griffith/Jim Paul: Constructing, Deconstructing, and Synthesizing Knowledge Narratives - Doug Brent: Information Technology and the Breakdown of Places of Knowledge - Ronald Glasberg: Mapping the Interdisciplinary Landscape: A Knowledge-Unification Strategy.

Students’ conceptions of biology

The argument in this paper has two parallel strands. One describes students’ conceptions of biology; the other uses Habermas’ epistemological framework as a way of suggesting alternative curricular questions. The two strands are brought together, since the research methodology is the situational‐interpretive curriculum orientation, and the findings are considered from this orientation. Thus, the data from the first strand is examined from the second strand, and consequently, new questions arise. With traditional knowing, science education researchers “know” how students conceive of the science they are learning by having students react to statements of the researchers conception of science. This way of knowing has been criticized because it depends upon the researchers set of ways of looking at students’ conceptions. As such, it does not treat students’ knowledge as a first‐order phenomena; knowing is, rather, a second‐order phenomena since it is filtered through another persons conceptions. In this st...