How much of the NSF funded fundamental scientific educational research is really fundamental?
(this article has been used for a proposal for The NSF 2026 Idea Machine)
This is the first piece on the NSF; click on this link to read the second one.
Three most important features of any successful professional are:
curiosity, imagination, and learnability (ability to learn).This is the first piece on the NSF; click on this link to read the second one.
So, if you are curious to learn
something new, use your imagination for this mental experiment.
Imagine you measured the
strength of your right hand and then the strength of your left hand. For the
most of people the numbers would be very close, so, let's assume that is the
case. Now, imagine that for three months you use one heavy dumbbell to exercise
your left hand every day for at least 30 minutes. But ONLY your left hand. In
three month you measure again the strength of each hand. What do you expect to
find out? Our common sense tells us that your left hand will be visibly
stronger than your right hand.
We don't need to fund and
conduct a special research to figure out what will happen in this experiment.
However, the majority of experiments in education funded by the NSF are exactly
like that, or very similar.
BTW: What do we actually mean
when we say "common sense?" We actually mean that our brain has
processed information and produced the answer - but without bringing the work
in our consciousness, without verbalizing it, or without symbolizing it.
It does not make the answer less truthful. For example, when a basketball
player shoots a three-pointer, he or she does not calculate the trajectory
using kinematics equations; but the brain of the shooter
processes information and designs actions based on the result of that
processing. Like any other skill, "common sense" also has levels;
less trained brain makes more mistakes than better trained brain (the 2nd law of TeachOlogy).
One important internal contradiction of the NSF is that is always calls for risky, disruptive, unexpected ideas, but in order to be funded, those risky, disruptive, unexpected ideas have to be based on a prolonged research, backed by a long list of citations, and managed by an established PI (meaning, that if a proposal has no lengthy introduction, long list of references, and a recognizable name there is no chance it will be even red).
The problem, however, that many NSF supported initiatives have nothing to do with scientific research. For example, in a recent post the NSF praises Dr. Viola Acoff for her work in broadening participation in STEM. What Dr. Acof does deserves all the credits and praises without any doubts, she and many other professionals do a great and very important job in the field of education helping various categories of people to get involved into STEM education. All that work, however, has very strong social impact, but very little scientific significance. Based on its on criteria, such socially important projects should not be supported by the NSF and have to be rejected. Or, there is another option - to "dress" all social projects in a scientific suit, to make them look like a scientific research.
One important internal contradiction of the NSF is that is always calls for risky, disruptive, unexpected ideas, but in order to be funded, those risky, disruptive, unexpected ideas have to be based on a prolonged research, backed by a long list of citations, and managed by an established PI (meaning, that if a proposal has no lengthy introduction, long list of references, and a recognizable name there is no chance it will be even red).
The problem, however, that many NSF supported initiatives have nothing to do with scientific research. For example, in a recent post the NSF praises Dr. Viola Acoff for her work in broadening participation in STEM. What Dr. Acof does deserves all the credits and praises without any doubts, she and many other professionals do a great and very important job in the field of education helping various categories of people to get involved into STEM education. All that work, however, has very strong social impact, but very little scientific significance. Based on its on criteria, such socially important projects should not be supported by the NSF and have to be rejected. Or, there is another option - to "dress" all social projects in a scientific suit, to make them look like a scientific research.
Previously, I wrote a paper on the matter related to one specific example of such "research" (Critical Reading of "Making Sense of Confusion" by Jason E. Dowd, Ives Araujo, and Eric Mazur). The post below is about the approach the NSF uses for many similar cases.
The
Traditional Approach Adopted by the NSF does
Not Advance the Science of Education
Dr. Valentin Voroshilov, Boston University
Physics Department, Boston University, Boston, USA
Abstract
The National Science Foundation has been
established in 1950 with the mission of: “To promote the progress of science;
to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure national
defense; and for other purposes”. The NSF’s “Procedures Guide” [1] states that
“All proposals submitted to NSF are
reviewed according to the two merit review criteria: Intellectual Merit and
Broader Impacts.” This requirement, however, does not reflect a social
nature of such a human practice like education. This paper is to point at the
necessity to differentiate between two different types of human practices, such
as a scientific research, and social advancement. This differentiation should
be reflected when addressing the funding the NSF provides to the most of the
grant applications in the field of education.
Key
words
The National Science Foundation, scientific
research, social advancement projects, funding, human practice, activity
theory.
1.
Introduction
1.1
Social Context
America
faces big challenges in economic, social, and international areas. The Country
will NOT be able to address those challenges without highly qualified workforce. However, in the current state,
the U.S. system of education does NOT supply to businesses and institutions
sufficient volume of graduates, especially within STEM-related fields. The pool
of qualified potential recruits for the U.S. Army, Navy, Ari Forces, and
Intelligence Services is shrinking [2, 3].
“According
to a 2016 survey of 400 employers from across Massachusetts, 75% said that it
was difficult to find people with the right skills to hire in Massachusetts.”
“Respondents find deficiencies in the readiness of new hires, not just in
“applied skills” like teamwork, critical thinking and communications, but also
in simple reading, writing, and math.” [4]
“The
number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents earning graduate degrees in
science and engineering fell 5 percent from its peak in 2008. At the same time,
the number of students on temporary visas earning the same degrees soared by 35
percent.” [5]
“Nearly
a half of PhD aerospace engineers, over 65% of PhD computer scientists, and
nearly 80% of PhD industrial and manufacturing engineers were born abroad.” [6]
Essentially,
the Country has become dependent on foreign intellectuals in the way it used to
be dependent on foreign oil. This
situation represents a threat to the national security of the Country.
The
U.S. Department of Education appropriates about 69 billion dollars per a year.
Philanthropic and charitable organizations provide close to 500 million dollars
a year to support innovations in education. However, those funds are used to
solve structural or social problems in education, such as enhancing material
infrastructure, teacher professional development, faculty training.
The task of propelling the advancements in the science of education belongs to the
National Science Foundation.
1.2.
Role of the NSF
The National Science Foundation is one of the
most important arms of the U.S. government which is directly responsible for
the implementation policies in the fields of science and technology.
The National Science Foundation has been
established in 1950 with the mission of: “To promote the progress of science;
to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure national
defense; and for other purposes”. NSF’s “Procedures Guide” states that “All proposals submitted to NSF are reviewed
according to the two merit review criteria: Intellectual Merit and Broader
Impacts.”
This sounds very natural for every scientist.
The problem is that many projects in the
field of education are social by their nature and do not intended to produce
new scientific knowledge.
A general theory of human practice [7
– 10] recognizes three kinds of broad human practices practices/projects with
the goal of advancing human life: (a) scientific research - the goal of a
scientific research is discovering new knowledge; (b) engineering and art - the
goal of an engineering development is building new devices (and systems of
devices), the goal of art is bringing/developing artifacts of art; (c) social
advancement (this link offers a description of the application of this approach to the field of teacher professional development) - the goal of a social advancement project is developing or
adopting new collective practice(s) beneficial for a society (new - for the given
social group, but may have been used already by other people).
Since all three practices have different
goals, they also should be managed differently, and that includes managing the
funding of the projects [11].
In the main part of the paper, a specific
example of the NSF funded grant, which is social by its nature, but had to be
presented as a scientific research, will be discussed, and the following
argument will represent an opinion against this practice, which currently is
very common [12, 13].
2.
Discussion
2.1.
General Methodology
As it will be shown later, many projects in
the field of education are social by their nature and do not intended to
produce new scientific knowledge. However, in order to get funded by the NSF,
they have to fulfill demands imposed by “the Intellectual Merit” – hence, they
have to be “dressed” as a scientific research.
Every human practice has some elements of a
scientific research: when we start a project, we have some understanding of
what we want to achieve, and how we want to achieve that (“a hypothesis”,
“methods”), and we view how will we assess how close we are to the goal
(“assessments”, “measurements”, “results”, “facts”).
But not every question is “a research
questions”, not every statement is “a hypothesis”, and not every search is “a
scientific research” [14].
A
scientific progress is the result of practices when people do something new for
a large part of human culture.
A scientific progress is the result of such
practices when people are mainly searching for new knowledge. The result of
such practice comes from a comparison of the currently established knowledge
and the knowledge obtained during a project. When that new knowledge is
described, the goal of a scientific project is achieved. However, when a scientific
research presents its results, the social impact of that research may be not
seen for years to come, or even never, because that is not expected from a
scientific discovery.
But the goal of a social project is to make a
specific societal change - here and now.
A
social progress is the result of innovative practices of people doing something
new - for them – which they did not do in the past, even if a similar practice
had been used by different people in a different place at a different time. When
we want to induce some societal change, we have to initiate and manage a social
project.
There are many things in the world which a similar on the outside
but very different on the inside, or by their functions, goals, properties. For
example, a space shuttle and a fighter jet look very similar, but only one can
fly in the outer world (a space shuttle). The difference between a scientific
research and a social project is similar to the difference between an
archeological excavation and a dig for a treasure chest: they both use some
digging, but the goals and the results are very different.
Currently, the representation of a socially
oriented project as a fundamental scientific research is a very common
practice; and it is based on a common misconception of what a science is.
There is a wide-spread opinion (also held by
many people in the field of education [9]) that:
(a) when a person poses a question, and
(b) then describes some steps which would
lead to the answer to this question, and
(c) then describes how he or she would assess
if the question was answered correctly
– that person conducts a “scientific
research”.
In reality, this procedure is most commonly
used for achieving a specific social goal.
This procedure is used when a person feels
some disconnection between his or her social position and the position the
person desires to have. This procedure has been an object of a study of a
General Theory of Human Activity (a.k.a. Activity Theory [7 – 10]),
which has several different forms, or academic schools, including the one used
in the field of a teacher professional development [15].
The difference between a scientific research
and a social project is in “what utilizes what”.
In a scientific research, some social
activity is being used as a vehicle to obtain new knowledge. In that case, some
advancement in some social practice represents a “collateral” result of the
research.
In a social project, some scientific
knowledge is being used to achieve positive changes in a certain social
situation. In this case, some newly recorded knowledge represents a
“collateral” result of the project.
There
are many instances when objects similar on the outside are very different on
the inside by their properties, or functions, or goals. For example, a space
shuttle and a fighter jet look very similar, but only one can fly in the outer
world (a space shuttle). To illustrate the difference between a scientific
research and a social project one can use an analogy: the difference between a
scientific research and a social project is similar to the difference between
an archeological excavation and a dig for a treasure chest: they both use some
digging, but the goals and the results are very much different.
Many of the projects “imposed” on teachers
are social projects by their nature, and should be treated and managed as such.
2.2.
Specific Analysis
Below is an excerpt from an abstract of a
grant proposal of a certain university (the grant received an award from the
NSF): “University are conducting research on the relationship between
mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT), teaching practice, and student
outcomes. … The research questions are as follows. How effective is Math
Solutions as compared to a typical ad-hoc mathematics professional development?
Does Math Solutions improve teachers’ MKT, the quality of their instruction,
and/or their students’ outcomes? How are different aspects of teachers’
mathematical knowledge and instructions related to student achievement?”
Anyone who is reading the abstract will
immediately understand that the project is about professional development of
math teachers. The ultimate goal of the project is to train 80 fourth and fifth
grade teachers.
There is no doubt that the trainers need to
know if the training process they plan to use will positively affect the math
skills and math knowledge of the trainees. However, the main goal of the
project, which is improving content knowledge of math teachers, does not
represent a scientific problem which would require a scientific research.
This grant proposal represents a clear
example of a social project with the goal of advancing math preparation of
school teachers. But in order to get the funding from the NSF, grantees had to
make it seen as a scientific project.
The research question (“How effective is Math
Solutions as compared to a typical ad-hoc mathematics professional
development?”) is irrelevant. All possible teacher professional development
programs should be available to teachers.
As long as teachers will be able to “vote
with feet” there is no need to “scientifically” research which program is
better (assuming that the NSF will be
keeping track of different programs and helping teachers to find the
information on the best programs).
Instead of a “research question” applicants
should have formulated “a social goal”.
This is what the grantees should had written:
“We want to teach mathematics to 80 teachers; this is a description of what the
teachers will learn, and this is a description of how we will assess the
results; and for that we need 4.7 million dollars for five years (which is
close to sixty thousand dollars per a preparation of a single teacher)”.
In 2016, the NSF awarded close to $61 million
in new projects “to enhance understanding of STEM education and workforce
development.
For example, the NSF’s website states the
following (in part) [16]:
“The new awards fund projects aimed at
generating foundational knowledge in:
_ Improving and advancing
STEM learning and learning environments for students, parents, teachers and the
general population in all settings, from formal and informal education to
technological learning environments.
_ Supporting and preparing a
STEM professional workforce that is ready to capitalize on unprecedented
advances in technology and science and address current and future global,
social and economic challenges.
_ Diversifying and increasing
participation in STEM, effectively building institutional capacity and informal
learning environments that foster the untapped potential of underrepresented
groups in STEM fields.”
The brief reading of the bullets already
raises a question – do the goals really represent the search for a fundamental
scientific knowledge, or they rather aim at improving immediate social issues
education system currently deals with?
The next web page leads to “the complete list of ECR projects and their abstracts”
[17].
The total number of projects
funded within $61 million is 114.
Below are the titles of the
awards listed on the first page (out of four).
(1).
“Transitioning Learners to Calculus In Community Colleges (TLC3): Advancing
Strategies for Success In STEM”.
(2).
“ArguLex - Applying Automated Analysis to a Learning Progression for
Argumentation”.
(3).
“Partnership for Building Capacity for Improvement In State Science Education”
(4).
“EAGER: Early Stage Research on Automatically Identifying Instructional Moves
in Mathematics”
(5).
“Proportions Playground: A Dynamic World to Support Teachers' Proportional
Reasoning”
(6).
“Domain-General and Domain-Specific Training to Improve Children's Mathematics”
(7).
“Transitioning Learners to Calculus in Community Colleges (TLC3): Advancing
Strategies for Success in STEM”
(8).
“Transitioning learners to Calculus in Community Colleges (TLC3): Advancing
Strategies for Success in STEM”
(9).
“Transitioning Learners to Calculus in Community Colleges (TLC3): Advancing
Strategies for Success in STEM”
(10).
“NCS-FO: Integrative Knowledge Modeling in Cognitive Neuroimaging”
(11).
“NCS-FO: Learning Efficient Visual Representations From Realistic Environments
Across Time Scales”
One can see, that the majority of the 114
projects funded by the NSF aims at the achievement of some positive social
changes in a certain educational environment.
For example, the very first project at the
top of the first page “Transitioning Learners to Calculus in Community
Colleges” aims at “Improving student outcomes in mathematics courses in
community colleges”.
The main vehicle of the project is improving
instructions by utilizing various instruments (mostly surveys, and
self-assessments). There is no doubt that this is an important social project.
However, tis does not represent a fundamental scientific research.
And many more projects sound like this one.
If we strip off all the scientific language,
we will read – paraphrasing –
1) “We want our students to do better. For
that we plan on trying this.” – if the project mostly involves faculty or
teachers who directly teach students.
or
2) “We want our school teachers to teach
better. For that we plan on trying this.” – if the project mostly involves
faculty from a school of education.
Out of the eleven grants
from page one, only the last two can be seen as a scientific research
proposals. Totally, only 3 projects from 114 really fall in a category
“scientific research”. Those three scientific projects are related to a
neurology of thinking; they study various connections between process of
thinking and processes happening in a brain while thinking. The total amount of
funding set aside for those projects is #2,242,982, which is equal to 3.7 % of
the total funds.
It means that 96.3 % of the funds are being
used for projects of another kind (do not belong to a fundamental scientific
research).
If one just reads the titles of the projects,
one can find several more projects which also may be sought as a part of a
fundamental scientific research, but that would require the detailed analysis
of the projects.
A brief reading of the project titles and of
some of the abstracts shows that the majority of the projects are of a social
nature; they aim at improving a current social situation by solving a specific
immediate social problem within the field of education.
No doubt, some of those socially oriented
projects are fundamentally important for making education better, more
successful, more student oriented, more diverse.
But they would not help much to advance a
science of education.
2.3.
Reflection
One might ask, what harm is in calling a
social project as a scientific one? Both types are important, and do good for
education. Down the road, universities get grants, supposedly teachers get some
help with their professional development, and hopefully students become better
educated.
A short answer is: it is bad because it makes
an impression of a huge amount of a scientific research happening in the field
of education; when in fact a true scientific research in the field of education
does not exceed 3 – 5 % of the total funding.
If we want to promote a science of education
to a true science we need to change that.
The NSF should not expect any big scientific
outcomes from any social project, but should be very demanding regarding the
methods for evaluating the success of the project. In the case described above,
the NSF should had demanded that applicants would guaranty that their
professional development approach would definitely and visibly (a.k.a.
measurably) “improve teachers’ MKT, the quality of their instruction, and (!)
their students’ outcomes” – or money back.
The bigger problem is that currently and
unwillingly, the NSF forces innovators (a.k.a. people producing a new social
outcome, like math teachers who know math) to make them to look as scientists
(a.k.a. people producing a new knowledge, like mathematicians).
The example of a grant proposal used above to
demonstrate the focus of this paper is one of many grants which are social by
the nature of the goals, but “dressed up” as scientific projects.
That happens because the NSF essentially
forces people into faking doing science.
The core of any science is being truthful
about everything; including goals, methods, types of actions being used to
achieve the goals. If people assume that faking science is fine – even for the sake
of achieving positive social changes – that will water down the essence of
science. Such an attitude as “I do something good, so what if I pretend that I
do science” – if not confined – might spread out into other practices.
K-12
education is not the only one type of education distorted by the demands
imposed by the NSF. There are many projects on a college and university levels,
which are also social by their nature (i.e. with the main goal of improving
some specific features of educational reality), but “dressed” as scientific
ones. One of the widely-spread examples is the well-known Learning Assistants
program. This program has originated as a means for fixing the shortage of STEM
middle and high school teachers. One of the main premises (a.k.a. “research
questions”, a.k.a. “hypotheses”) is that when undergraduate students get an
opportunity to be immersed into a university teaching process, they will
eventually end up teaching middle and high school students. In reality, no more
than two percent of Learning Assistants choose to become teachers. The program
might eventually have a strong social impact, because what the program really
does is generating a growing number of educated and socially active people, who
also have elevated awareness of what it means and how it feels to be a teacher.
However, this is an example of a social action which does not require any scientific research; because there is no doubt that
adding to an undergraduate class of students more people who (in addition to an
instructor and graduate teaching assistants) can provide an extra help to
students, will result in better learning outcomes (on average).
In
fact, almost every educational “research” project at a college or a university
level is not a science project, but the one designed to keep faculty trying new
things in the way faculty teaches. I say, ninety percent of issues with
education college students has its roots in a high and middles school – this is
where ninety percent of funding should go; when ninety percent of high school
graduates will have the background sufficient to study at a college level
without using any remedial courses, the most of the issues related to college
education will just disappear. What really needs funding is developing standard
procedures for measuring learning outcomes of college students, which
(procedures) would be used by ALL colleges across the country. Until this task
is finished, ANY educational project at a college or university level will not
be scientific. Until standard procedures for measuring learning outcomes of
college students will be developed and adopted, all college level projects will
be just dressed as a “research”.
3.
Conclusion:
By making social projects to look like
scientific ones, the NSF is working against its own mission by helping
developing wrong attitude about science – at least within a large number of
projects in the field of education.
It is a well-established fact that both, the
Religion and the Government, have benefited from the separation of Church and
State.
Similarly, the separation of programs for
social advancement from programs for scientific advancement will be beneficial
for both, social and scientific advancement.
As any well-established science, the science
of education needs development of research facilities specifically designed and
designated to study phenomena within learning and teaching processes [18]. The
NSF should adopt to the development of the science of education the approach
which proved to be effective for such large scientific programs as the
“Manhattan Project’, or the “Apollo Program”.
NSF needs to stop finance any social projects. For example, NSF would never finance building a road or a bridge. Instead, NSF would finance study on the properties of different materials used for building roads or bridges.The same approach must be applied to the field of education. However, it does not mean all social projects in education have to stop. On the contrary, the support for the development of all aspects of teaching and learning practices needs to be amplified. But it is not the mission of the NSF to support such development. The mission of the NSF is advancing sciences! Hence, the Congress needs to establish a different fund with the specific mission of advancing educational practices on all levels of society.
NSF needs to stop finance any social projects. For example, NSF would never finance building a road or a bridge. Instead, NSF would finance study on the properties of different materials used for building roads or bridges.The same approach must be applied to the field of education. However, it does not mean all social projects in education have to stop. On the contrary, the support for the development of all aspects of teaching and learning practices needs to be amplified. But it is not the mission of the NSF to support such development. The mission of the NSF is advancing sciences! Hence, the Congress needs to establish a different fund with the specific mission of advancing educational practices on all levels of society.
Appendix I
The mission of science is accumulating new knowledge.
There are two types of knowldge:
1. descriptive;
2. predictive.
Hence, there are two types of sciences
1. only descriptive (currently in only descriptive state)
2. predictive - when the descriptive stage has been mostly passed and predictive state has been advanced.
Historically, when humans started to study the nature there was only one way to do it - via describing what they see, like, when that approach matured, geographers did in ther letters from new territories, or zoologists, or botanists. For the most part of the existence of sciences there was no other sciences but descriptive.
All that descriptive knowledge essentially was no different from art - people developed it and then people admired it. There was no actual use, practical application of it. Of course, there were pockets of predictive knowledge in astronomy and mechanics, but even that knowledge was not based on a solid scientific methodology.
Only during the last two-three centuries predictive sciences have been significantly advanced, and the most developed of all is physics.
Nowadays, with our current knowledge about what predictive science is and does, we should not even call any descriptive science as a science anymore. But traditions day hard. Hence, despite the undeniable fact that there is no predictive knowledge in education (beside trivialities), the practice of describing educational events is being called "science".
Appendix II
All that descriptive knowledge essentially was no different from art - people developed it and then people admired it. There was no actual use, practical application of it. Of course, there were pockets of predictive knowledge in astronomy and mechanics, but even that knowledge was not based on a solid scientific methodology.
Only during the last two-three centuries predictive sciences have been significantly advanced, and the most developed of all is physics.
Nowadays, with our current knowledge about what predictive science is and does, we should not even call any descriptive science as a science anymore. But traditions day hard. Hence, despite the undeniable fact that there is no predictive knowledge in education (beside trivialities), the practice of describing educational events is being called "science".
Appendix II
After the dotted line is the letter I sent on July
28, 2019 to 98 (!) members of various NSF committees in the field of education.
There are two possible
outcomes from this action:
1. no reaction (including, “thank
you, but …”).
2. someone would initiate a
further communication.
The former outcome would mean
one of the following:
1. NSF members have no
curiosity. If you suspect that you may find a talent in your field, and you would be curious, you would
initiate communication. That is what baseball scouts do (or at least used to,
according to multiple movies) – they deliberately search for a talent in order
to “exploit” it. I have a talent of being a good teacher; I taught thousands of
students and train hundreds of school teachers, and I am good at what I do.
2. NSF members do not have
deep understanding of the content of their job, hence they rely solely on the
form/appearance (that can be deceiving) of an entity/object/document/proposal
they encounter.
3. NSF members do not care
about the content of their job, they merely function as clerks.
In a way, this letter is an experiment,
a litmus test of sort. I will post an update in August.
....................................................
To education advancement
professionals.
Hello members of the NSF
committees on education,
Every NSF proposal
solicitation includes a statement, quote: “The
program invites creative and innovative proposals that address the critical
need”.
But the question is, how to
assess how creative and innovative a proposal is?
Based on my personal
experience, the #1 criterion that always has been and still used is – how does
this proposal fit in the current body of a research. The proposal MUST have a
broad and detailed description of what has been done already in the field,
state clearly the place of the proposal, and MUST be supplied with extensive
list of citations and references. The absence of this criterion AUTOMATICALLY
disqualifies ANY proposal from consideration – even though the CONTENT of a
proposal may indeed be “creative and innovative”.
I can state with the complete certainty that this
approach is simply wrong for the proposals that goals is improving education.
If you have no interest to
participate in this discussion (although, a discussion on the disagreement used
to be the main tool of a scientific progress), you can just ignore this letter.
Otherwise, I refer you to my
publication on the matter: How
much of the NSF funded fundamental scientific educational research is really
fundamental?
There might be different
reasons for reading (or not) someone else’s’ work; a question like “Does this
person know what he writes about?” might help to make the decision.
I can assure you – I know
very well my field – education – and I have
a solid, well documented, publicized, and easily available proof of my
professional success in the field (available on this link).
I have unorthodox (a.k.a.
innovative) approaches to teaching math and physics, to teaching in general
(including taxonomy), and to training school teachers – the fact of my professional success
proves that my approaches are EFFECTIVE. At the minimum, I myself could have
become a subject of an NSF study (that would demonstrate creativity of the
NSF).
However, I also supplied the
NSF with several (!) specific project descriptions.
Naturally, all of them have
been rejected.
In fact, none of them even
has been analyzed on the merits of its
content.
For anyone who may find promising,
or at least interesting, an actual unorthodox approach to improving education, this link leads to the
bulk of my research on the matter, including five specific proposals.
With best regards,
Dr. Valentin Voroshilov
Physics Department
Boston University;
Bridgewater State University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, ITT- Technical
Institute.
.............................On July 28, 2019 I sent a letter to 98 (!) members of various NSF committees in the field of education. As of 90/11 I have no feedback, no single letter. No "thank you for you letter, we will consider it", or "Please, forward your inquire to ...", or there are many other formal reactions, but even those are absent. This proves that people who work in NSF have no curiosity, no thinking outside of a box, no real intention to find something really new, or even no ability to recognize it if they see it. All the efforts go into checking if the documents (grant applications) fit the format. No wonder education in such a poor state - despite enormous amount of money spent on grants. When there is no real intention to achieve a real improvement, there is no any intention to discover ideas that do not fit in an accepted format. But formative thinking is not thinking, it is just pretending to thinking. When all one needs to do is to follow a format thinking is simply not required. And that is why education research virtually doesn't exist. Education research is not an actual scientific research establishing strong correlations between well-defined parameters, but an exploration, similar to a geographer exploring a new territory and writing letters with the description of the discoveries he/she made (or a botanist or zoologist describing new species they found). However, NSF administrators pretend that this is not true and prefer just ignore anything that can shake their state of self-imposed ignorance. That's just easier.
_____
Appendix III
The links to all five my applications to the NSF 2026 Big Idea Machine (from August 31, 2018 to October 26, 2018):
1. Entry125253: High Frequency Data Streams in Education
2. Entry124656: objective measures of physics knowledge
3. Entry125317: National database teacher PD
4. Entry124655: role of NSF in funding education
5. Entry125719: The new type of a science course for science teachers.
To learn more about my professional experience:
The voices of my students
"The Backpack Full of Cash": pointing at a problem, not offering a solution
Essentials of Teaching Science
A copy of a note from the main page.
I am not an idiot or a reckless person. The reason I can allow myself writing what I think, even if that is perpendicular to commonly adopted and conventional views, is that my financial situation is sufficient and stable. Of course, as a normal person, I wouldn't mind making more money, or being involved in more interesting projects (as described in my generic resume). But I do not have to pretend to be someone I'm not to make my living.
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US News, http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-05-17/more-stem-degrees-going-to-foreign-students
[6].
American Physical Society, http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/upload/POPASTEMReport.pdf
[7]. Shchedrovitsky,
G.P., Systems Research, II. Methodological Problems. Edited by J.M. Gvishiani.
Pergamon Press, 1985.
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R-L. (Eds.) (1999). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge: Cambridge
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of Collaboration and Learning at Work (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and
Computational Perspectives)”, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
[10]. Hasan, H. & Kazlauskas,
A., “Activity Theory: who is doing what, why and how.” In H. Hasan (Eds.),
Being Practical with Theory: A Window into Business Research (pp. 9-14).
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funding fostering mainstream opinion to monopoly". Scientometrics. 87 (2):
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[13]. Julia Belluz, Brad Plumer,
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http://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12016710/science-challeges-research-funding-peer-review-process.
[14].
Valentin Voroshilov, “Critical Reading of “Making Sense of Confusion” by Jason
E. Dowd, Ives Araujo, and Eric Mazur”.
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Valentin Voroshilov, “Professional Designing as One of Key Competencies of
Modern Teacher”, In book “Facilitating In-Service Teacher Training for
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Valentin
Voroshilov, “What Infrastructure Do We Need toBuild to Promote Education Research to a True Science?”
Appendix IV
This link lead to the description of the 2018 NSF awards in the field of education.
Below is a set of screenshots with the titles of the awards.
Based on the titles, none of the grants will provide any significant input for the science of education.
The mission of a science as a human practice is making reliable predictions. What the NSF should be asking from grant seekers is not just a "research question" (which, in the field of education, is often a rather trivial conjecture) but also "what new, specific and reliable predictions will science community be able to do as the result of this "scientific" research"? The key word is "specific", not something general like "practice makes perfect"; most of general laws of learning and teaching practices have been summarized in "The Fundamental Laws Of TeachOlogy".
Everything I said about the projects funded in 2016, remains correct for the projects funded in 2018.
It does not mean they should not be funded. It means, they should not be funded by the NSF (maybe, by some education disaster relief fund?).
Appendix IV
This link lead to the description of the 2018 NSF awards in the field of education.
Below is a set of screenshots with the titles of the awards.
The mission of a science as a human practice is making reliable predictions. What the NSF should be asking from grant seekers is not just a "research question" (which, in the field of education, is often a rather trivial conjecture) but also "what new, specific and reliable predictions will science community be able to do as the result of this "scientific" research"? The key word is "specific", not something general like "practice makes perfect"; most of general laws of learning and teaching practices have been summarized in "The Fundamental Laws Of TeachOlogy".
Everything I said about the projects funded in 2016, remains correct for the projects funded in 2018.
It does not mean they should not be funded. It means, they should not be funded by the NSF (maybe, by some education disaster relief fund?).
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