Depth is More Important Than
Breadth in Teaching Science
Depth
SED 625SC
Breadth
Arleni Lopez
Lizet Banuelos
Kevin McMahon
Current Situation:
E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s Solution:
• Depth/Breadth binary is a “premature
polarity.
• Polarization is a “barrier to progress.”
Hirsch’s Solution:
• Understanding the Four Principles of
Learning will resolve the binary.
The ability to learn something
new is not primarily a general,
formal skill.
• Is domain specific
• Learning to learn entails acquiring relevant
knowledge about specific domains.
General ability to learn is highly
correlated with general
knowledge.
• Learning ability depends chiefly on having
relevant prior knowledge.
The best way to learn a subject is
to learn its general principles and
to study an ample number of
diverse examples that illustrate
those principles.
• Deductive application.
Broad general knowledge is the
best entrée to deep knowledge.
• “I draw this conclusion from the field of
psychology called discourse analysis. The most
effective way to introduce the meaning of a
discourse is to start with a summary…. After
students gain a broad context by developing a
sense of the whole domain, they can mentally fit
the various parts that follow into that whole, and
makes sense of them.”
Problems:
• Conclusions are anecdotal.
• Children start fitting parts into wholes in
early childhood in the nascent development
of domains.
• Many discoveries made during the early
careers of scientists before domain
completion— Why?
Problems (cont.)
• Thinking “inside the box” of domain
paradigms
• See Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific
Revolutions
Solution:
• Don’t wait for domain completion to give
opportunities for the depth needed for fitting
pieces together.
• It won’t be perfect.
• It may be messy-creative
• It will take time away from breadth.
• They’ll be more engaged.
Solution
• They’ll remember it better.
• Which means they can make more
connections and be more creative down the
road with it.
• They may not score as well on standardized
test— but where is there a correlation
between test scores, creativity and good
science.
Solution (a little Philosophy):
• Don’t try to resolve the binary.
• Let the opposing sides battle it out.
• Another words: Quit trying to reform
education by resolving binaries such as
depth/breadth, etc. Let education be a
chaotic mess!
Say what?!
• That’s right— a chaotic mess!
• To understand this let’s talk about binaries!
Binaries are a part of many
philosophical/religious systems.
• Binaries express opposites that defy
resolution, ie: they’re paradoxical Ying—
Yang
• One—Many
• Subject—Object
• Good—Evil
• Yada—Yada
What happens when you resolve
a binary?
—Nicholas of Cusa:
• The Fall introduces binaries: good/evil, life/death,
etc.
• The Divine Logos is the Coincidentia
Oppositorum.
• %&$! happens when man
tries to resolve binaries. Resolution
only through “transfiguration.”
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What happens when you resolve
a binary?
—Jacques Derrida
• All reality and knowledge thereof
is a human construction.
• Constructed through formation
of binaries.
• Resolve binaries results is the
dissolution of meaning.
• What you have left is nothing.
So what we have is the ultimate
binary: God and Nothing
— Nicholi Berdyæv
• But out of this God-Nothing
complex comes creativity.
• You know…Genesis… God
speaking to the void, Let there
be….
What do we propose:
• Don’t resolve the binary with government
imposed solutions!
• Let both poles battle it out.
• In the chaos of nothing (no solution) there is
freedom to be creative!
• But right now the balance is swung to far to
breadth so….
Embrace the
Chaos!
However…
• There may come a time when the binary balance
may need to be shifted towards depth.
• Keep Big Government out!
• Principle of Subsidarity: best & most
representative government is closest to the people.
• Local control allow more nimble shifts in balance
and easier for binary poles to “yell” at each other.