The Need to Emphasize
Epistemology in Teaching and
Research
How do post secondary students interact with activities so that they
can gradually take greater responsibility for their learning, while at
the same time succeeding at constructing a deeper understanding of
course content ?
Calvin Kalman
1
Paul Hewitt, the author of the best selling Conceptual Physics has written
on this subject: “the professor and the students view solving of problems
in a very different way. The professor classifies the problems in terms of
physics concepts, while the students classify them by situations.”
April Interview:
Interviewer: okay, now I'm just going to ask you to compare for each
course, first of all I'll start with the math 202/203, would you say you're
doing better, worse, or about the same in the math course as you are in
Dr. Kalman's course
AT: Physics it's more like a combination of problem solving and
understanding the material.… For physics the problem solving …
first of all you have to understand the concept and everything, for
mathematics it's more like templates
Calvin Kalman
2
Problem solving skills also requires knowledge of concepts. Until
midway through high school, students can be successful at courses
by memorizing templates for every situation encountered on an
examination. That is apply different templates to different
knowledge subsets.
Some students can dismiss the conceptual basis of the problems,
because their epistemology is formula driven and they accept
calculated answers as a goal in itself.
Students lack the ability to apply principles
garnered from a problem to an apparently
different problem.
Calvin Kalman
3
Students hold views different from or alternative to
those that they will be taught in their courses
Some students view physics as weakly connected pieces of
information to be separately learned in contrast to the web of
interconnections perceived by their instructors (Hammer, 1989,
1994).


Roth, & Lucas(1997) point out that "meaningful learning in scientific classrooms
appears to require that students' worldviews are commensurable with that of the
science they experience in and through the reenacted curriculum. "
Helping students to do this involves initiating a growth process which can easily
span the entire course.
Calvin Kalman
4
For students to change their epistemology students
need to critically examine their view of the world.
 Epistemological change in a university gateway course requires
the student to reach the highest level of Bloom's taxonomy Evaluation: the ability to judge the value of material in the light
of a specific purpose using a given criteria. "Students are
required to make value judgments, to rate ideas or objects, and
to accept or reject materials based on standards."
 At this most complex level the key skill is the ability to make
judgments. (Jacobs, & Chase, 1992)
Calvin Kalman
5
A study by Huffman and Heller (1995) of 750 university students
in a calculus-based introductory physics course shows that most
students' personal (alternative) scientific conceptions "are best
characterized as loosely organized, ill-defined bits and pieces of
knowledge that are dependent upon the specific circumstances in
question."
Developing a Scientific mindset thus may not simply be a
conceptual change from personal scientific concepts to
scientifically accepted concepts. It may also be a change in attitude
from a view that study in science is a matter of solving problems
using an independent set of tools, classified according to problem
type, to a view that a science subject consists of a web of
interconnected concepts.
Calvin Kalman
6
development of critical thinking is a
process.
We are uncomfortable with processes - we want conclusions. The need
for critical thinking is probably the reason why there has been some
difficulties in applying conceptual change models to instruction with
younger students. ( Gunstone, Robin Gray and Searle (1992)).
Even if students successfully change their mode of solving problems,
they are likely to maintain their method of acquiring knowledge by
compartmentalization unless they develop adequate critical thinking
skills.
Calvin Kalman
7
If we as educators emphasized the need to change students
epistemologies more in our teaching, than there may not only be
more success in the understanding of the subject by our students, but
also be dividends in the future in more directed research by future
graduate students.
As to future research, I decided to put to the test what a dedication
to a clear epistemology would mean to research in my other field as
chair of an international series of conferences in high energy
physics. I produced a paper showing that with the advent of the
Standard Model in the late 1970’s the guiding epistemology
became and still is Atomism.
Calvin Kalman
8
A strict adherence to that epistemology requires that quarks cannot
be fundamental particles. (Kalman, 2004, 2005).
The essential notion of Atomism was set out in 1750 by Rudjer
Boscovich: atoms contain smaller parts, which in turn contain still
smaller parts, and so on down to the fundamental building blocks of
matter. These fundamental particles are indivisible bits of matter that
are ungenerated and indestructible. The properties of quarks would fit
the description of fundamental particles within a renewed bootstrap
model (at the quark level), but are square pegs for fundamental
particles as set out by Atomism. Quarks are not indestructible; some
can decay into other quarks! (Other reasons why quarks should be
considered composite particles are found in the book Preons by
D'Souza and Kalman, 1992.)
Calvin Kalman
9
Epistemological change is at the root of major shifts in science.
Feyerabend (1993) has pointed out that evaluation of a
theoretical framework doesn’t occur until there is an
alternative (principle of counter induction.)
A scientist who is interested in maximal empirical content, and
who wants to understand as many aspects of his theory as
possible, will adopt a pluralistic methodology, he will compare
theories with other theories rather than with ‘experience ‘,
‘data’, or ‘facts’” An example of a discovery that arises in this
way is Galileo’s discovery of inertia.
Calvin Kalman
10
Feyerabend notes that Galileo in his early works had been a
follower of Ptolemy. He argued against the motion of the earth;
“… objects which one lets fall from high places to the ground such
as a stone from the top of a tower would not fall towards the foot of
the tower; for during the time which the stone coming rectilinearly
towards the ground spends in the air, the earth escaping it, and
moving towards the east would receive it in a part far removed
from the foot of the tower in exactly the same manner in which a
stone that is dropped from the mast of a rapidly moving ship will
not fall towards its foot, but move towards the stern” (Galileo
(1953).
Only later did he take the Copernican point of view and assume
that the stone dropped from the mast would fall toward its foot.
Calvin Kalman
11
Feyerabend’s conclusion is that Galileo only arrives at the modern
theory of inertia by a critical examination of the tower experiment
in the light of two alternative frameworks; that of Ptolemy and that
of Copernicus. Feyerabend summarizes.
The idea that examining alternatives will enhance critical
thinking skills and help to produce conceptual change is put to
the test by work such as that of Eliason (1996). His work
involves “confronting students with two very plausible ideas that
they would normally accept uncritically, and then showing that
the two ideas are apparently not compatible with each other”.
Calvin Kalman
12
The obvious experimental data favoured Ptolemy rather than
Copernicus.
Galileo had to have experimental backing for his hypothesis.
Bodies had to have the property of inertia. Once the body is
dropped from the high tower, it had to continue moving with the
same rotational speed as the rotating Earth
This property, inertia of the body had to be general. Thus a
body moving on an infinite perfectly smooth plane must
move forever at the same speed
Calvin Kalman
13
This hypothesis had consequences, which Galileo could test. To
Galileo once you have a working theory, all possible developments
based on the theory must be correct.
Galileo reasoned that objects rolling down an inclined plane
behave exactly like a freely falling body, but with the effect of
gravity greatly reduced.
If the plane is tilted up, the ball while rolling uphill, will go more
and more slowly. If it is tilted down, the ball will go faster and
faster. If the plane is perfect and horizontal, the ball will neither
slow down nor speed up but continue forever.
Calvin Kalman
14
Since Galileo’s hypothesis did not arise from experimental
data, it did not fit Bacon’s idea of science.
The invention of inertia requires an examination of what
would be needed to have the Earth to rotate around its axis and
a ball fall straight down beside the high tower. Such a notion
requires a high order of critical thinking. Hardly the abilities
found in most students entering an introductory course.
Galileo’s further use of the abstraction of an infinitely smooth
plane is inconceivable to the 50% of students who are still at
Piaget’s concrete operational stage.
Calvin Kalman
15
Q uickTim e™ and a
TI FF ( Uncom pr essed) decom pr essor
ar e needed t o see t his pict ur e.
Mary Hesse
Richard Manson: Hesse shares with Kuhn and
Feyerabend a use of examples from the history
of science to undermine empiricist and
deductivist theories of scientific development
and method. The starting-point for her own
critique of empiricism has been the thesis of
the underdetermination of (scientific) theories
by (observational) data.
Hesse builds on the modern theory of hermeneutics developed by
Hans-Georg Gadamer based upon notions put forth by his teacher
Heidegger. Gadamer argued that it is through language that the world
is opened up for us. Our prejudices, whatever aspects of our cultural
horizon that we take for granted, are brought into the open in the
encounter with the past.
Calvin Kalman
16
In science this could be analogous to students encounters with
scientific texts while bringing with them their own conceptions of
the world.
Gadamer refers to this movement of understanding as the fusion of
horizons. As we come, through the work of interpretation, to
understand what at first appears alien, we participate in the
production of a richer, more encompassing context of meaning. The
resulting interaction of text and reader is Gadamer's version of the
hermeneutic circle.
Jürgen Habermas emphasized that the hermeneutic circle
view, must involve critical judgment and reflection.
Calvin Kalman
17
The interplay between the parts and the whole of a text is the way
in which our reading adds to the complexity and depth of its
meaning.
What is immediately striking to readers versed in recent literature
in philosophy of science is that almost every point Habermas made
about the human sciences has recently been made about the natural
sciences.
Calvin Kalman
18
The work of Wittgenstein, Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend and others has
in various ways made it apparent that the descriptive language of
observables is ‘theory-laden’, that is to say, in every empirical
assertion that can be used as a starting-point of scientific
investigation and theory, we employ concepts that interpret the data
in terms of some general view of the world.
It follows, so it is held, that the logic of science is necessarily
circular: data are interpreted and sometimes corrected by
coherence with theory, and, at least in less extreme versions of the
account, theory is also somehow constrained by empirical data.
(Hesse, 1980, pp. 171, 172)
Calvin Kalman
19
“Scientific theory is a reading of the ‘book of nature,’ requiring
circular reinterpretations between theory and observation and also
theory and theory, and also requiring ‘dialogue’ about the meaning
of theoretical language within the scientific community” (Hesse
1986,181).
Calvin Kalman
20
Students who are having difficulty in
physics courses because they can't
solve complex quantitative physics
problems can write themselves into the
solution. because they effectively
dialogue about the problem with
themselves.
Calvin Kalman
21
Reflective Writing
First I have the book definitely, I start reading
it slowly because if I read it fast I'll have to go
over it again and again…after reading the
sections I underline what's most important
and then whatever's just in my head I just put
it in
First it's to prepare yourself before coming to class…(you're, you're just,
you're forced obviously to open the book and know what the teacher is going
to say…and talk about in class)
Next you start thinking of a lot of things at the same time: what you read;
Then when I close the book I start thinking; I argue about this, agree with
this, disagree with this, and just write,… write, write, write,…
Calvin Kalman
22
1) Read each section (or two sections if one of the sections is short).
2) Carefully try to focus on what you donΥt understand, and all points that you would li ke to be
clarifi ed
3) Dur ing your reading, use whatever techniques you usua lly use to understand required
reading including underli ning, highli ghting, summarizing, and rereading.
4) Having completed this task, freewrite about what you have read. (About 2/3 of a page per
section.)
5) Reflective-writing is not essay writing. You wil l usually not use capitals, and wil l often
write fragments of sentences. . If at any tim e you feel that you canΥt go on Π your mi nd is a
blank Π write a onsenseΣ word over and over, e.g. the last word that you wrote, wrote,
wrote, wrote, Ι until you start writing again.
 Write about the section(s) that you have read. Write about what it means. Try to find out what
you donΥt know, and try to understand through your writing t he material you donΥt know. When
you are finished, you will be prepared to ask questions in class about all the points that you donΥt
understand.
Calvin Kalman
23
Problem
Analysis and
Goal Setting
Mental
Representation of
Assignment
Discourse
Knowledge
Content
Knowledge
Content Problem Space
Read a new section
Identify concepts(may
include highlighting
summarizing or
underlining)
Relate to previous
sections (establish a
roadmap)
Rhetorical Problem
Space
Problem
Translation
Problem
Translation
Freewrite on the
section
Construct canons of
argument
Knowledge Telling
Process
Identify which
concepts are clear
and which are not
Identify questions
that need to be
answered in class
Examine meaning of
concepts
Calvin Kalman
24
The hermeneutical circle described by Hesse is exactly that
employed by a student using reflective writing to understand text.
The interplay back and forth between the rhetorical space and the
content problem space shown in the diagram is precisely the
hermeneutical circle described by Hesse.
The examination by Maxwell of the state of Electricity and
magnetism in his day and his discovery of an inconsistency
between the treatment of the electric and magnetic fields is
likewise a hermeneutical circle between theory and theory.
Calvin Kalman
25
Contact Me!
Email Calvin.Kalman@Concordia.ca
Phone(514)848-2424 xt 3284
Fax(514)848-2828
Write: Department of Physics
Concordia University
Montreal, QC H3G 1M8
Canada
homepagehttp://Physics.Concordia.ca/Facultypages/Kalman.html
Thanks!!
Calvin Kalman
26