Angle measure, quantitative reasoning, and instructional coherence: an examination of the role of mathematical ways of thinking as a component of teachers’ knowledge base

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Tallman ◽  
Kristin M. Frank
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump

This chapter is concerned with the question of the difference between philosophy and theology. It rejects certain prevalent ways of thinking about this difference. It argues that a more promising way of thinking about these disciplines is to be found in their names: “philosophy” in its etymology means something like the love of wisdom; “theology” in its etymology means something like the word with regard to God. God, unlike wisdom, is not an abstract universal. Rather, and by virtue of being characterized by mind and will, God is more nearly a person. The chapter spells out the implications of this difference, arguing that the knowledge at issue when we do theology is irreducible to propositional knowledge. Rather, it is a knowledge of persons. The chapter illuminates the role of the knowledge of persons in theological discussion and draws some conclusions about the methodology which will be useful to theology.


2021 ◽  
pp. 140349482110270
Author(s):  
Knut Ole Sundnes ◽  
Geir Sverre Braut

The COVID-19 epidemic has revealed a shortage of basic knowledge and understanding of pandemics, especially regarding their dynamics and how to contain them. The results are a host of governments’ decrees and instructions, one replacing the other, often within the same week. It has further, in a truly short time, resulted in an overwhelming number of publications, many of them prioritising early publication over quality. This commentary addresses the concept of structured research related to disasters and how the use of endorsed guidelines will facilitate well-designed evaluation research with improved rigour and external validity, even if applied retrospectively. The outcome should be a solidified knowledge base. Further, the important role of public health efforts is to be highlighted, as their role has proved crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Michaella Cavanagh

Becoming a PhD scholar requires a change in identity and new ways of thinking. This is difficult for those from practical backgrounds who struggle to merge the theoretical/scholarly with the creative/practical. Moving towards the scholarly calls for the unlearning of previously held truths. Starting autoethnographically, metaphorical drawings opened up space for critical reflection – crucial to researching oneself. Three metaphorical drawings were made for seminal points in my journey from a fashion design lecturer to a PhD scholar. Each drawing is accompanied by a short narrative and further analysed through conversations with my PhD supervisor. In writing the narratives and dialogue, deeper insights were gained in understanding the role of theory, allowing me to see how my identity was shifting into that of being a scholar. Simultaneously, using visuals as tangible objects allowed me to challenge the familiar while drawing on the resources of my practical background. The result was the inherent alignment of theory and practice, a deeper understanding of the changes within my identities and the alignment of my disparate selves. The use of visual methods has value for others wishing to find a way to bring the strengths of their current disciplines into a more scholarly realm.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110680
Author(s):  
Priti Narayan ◽  
Emily Rosenman

This commentary explores the politics of writing about the economy in a culture, society, and discipline that tends to prioritize masculinist (and white) theories and definitions of economy over embodied experiences of people living their everyday lives. Inspired by Timothy Mitchell's problematization of the economy as an object of analysis, we press further on the seemingly singular unit of “the” economy and who is allowed to define it as such. We are animated by questions of who is considered an expert on the economy and how, or by whom, crises in the economy are recognized. Drawing from our own writing experiences during the pandemic and from social movements we research, we argue for alternate ways of thinking about experiences of and expertise on the economy. In reckoning with how social movements speak to power in a bid to transform economies, we consider the role of economic geography in the economy of writing and knowledge production surrounding “the economy” itself. We make the case for a more public economic geography grounded in the social and economic embeddedness of knowledge production, the material consequences of who gets to define what is economically “important,” and the potential for this expertise to be located anywhere.


Author(s):  
Kristine Peta Jerome

This chapter explores the role of the built environment in the creation, cultivation and acquisition of a knowledge base by people populating the urban landscape. It examines McDonald’s restaurants as a way to comprehend the relevance of the physical design in the diffusion of codified and tacit knowledge at an everyday level. Through an examination of space at a localised level, this chapter describes the synergies of space and the significance of this relationship in navigating the global landscape.


Author(s):  
Yingxu Wang

Eyes as the unique organ possess intensively direct connections to the brain and dynamically perceptual accessibility to the mind. This paper analyzes the cognitive mechanisms of eyes not only as the sensory of vision, but also the browser of internal memory in thinking and perception. The browse function of eyes is created by abstract conditioning of the eye's tracking pathway for accessing internal memories, which enables eye movements to function as the driver of the perceptive thinking engine of the brain. The dual mechanisms of the eyes as both the external sensor of the brain and the internal browser of the mind are explained based on evidences and cognitive experiences in cognitive informatics, neuropsychology, cognitive science, and brain science. The finding on the experiment's internal browsing mechanism of eyes reveals a crucial role of eyes interacting with the brain for accessing internal memory and the cognitive knowledge base in thinking, perception, attention, consciousness, learning, memorization, and inference.


Author(s):  
Subhro Roy ◽  
Tim Vieira ◽  
Dan Roth

Little work from the Natural Language Processing community has targeted the role of quantities in Natural Language Understanding. This paper takes some key steps towards facilitating reasoning about quantities expressed in natural language. We investigate two different tasks of numerical reasoning. First, we consider Quantity Entailment, a new task formulated to understand the role of quantities in general textual inference tasks. Second, we consider the problem of automatically understanding and solving elementary school math word problems. In order to address these quantitative reasoning problems we first develop a computational approach which we show to successfully recognize and normalize textual expressions of quantities. We then use these capabilities to further develop algorithms to assist reasoning in the context of the aforementioned tasks.


2003 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 348-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilson Lowrey

Variability in newspaper design is typically thought to reflect changes in the paper's economic environment as well as wider cultural trends. The present study proposes an additional factor: the relative influence of the design subgroup, conceptualized as an “occupational subgroup” with its own distinct knowledge base, norms, and values. The analysis was conducted within the context of higher-level predictors of design variability, including organizational size, corporate size, and newspaper competition. Findings from a national survey of newspaper organizations show that professionally judged design quality is most strongly predicted by size of the newspaper, and prominence of graphics is best explained by relative influence of the design subgroup. It appears graphical prominence is shaped most by the political effectiveness of designers, and design quality is more greatly determined by the consequences of size, such as level of resources and degree of specialized expertise.


2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. 435-441
Author(s):  
Günther K. H. Zupanc

The elucidation of the principal features of chemical synaptic transmission has been one of the great achievements in the history of neuroscience, yet students have significant difficulties developing a deeper understanding of the underlying concept. This is particularly true for the role that diffusion of neurotransmitters across the synaptic cleft plays in this process. At least part of the learning problem is due to an erroneous view of diffusion as a slow process, and to an inability to apply the concepts of size and scale to the synapse and its structural components. To overcome these difficulties, a structured/guided inquiry activity, combined with quantitative reasoning tasks, is described for teaching chemical synaptic transmission as part of undergraduate biology or neuroscience courses. Through this activity, students familiarize themselves with the absolute and relative dimensions of the structural components of synapses; use data from morphometric and schematic models of synapses to estimate the time it takes a neurotransmitter to diffuse across the synaptic cleft; and evaluate how this process relates to synaptic delay and generation of a sufficiently high concentration of transmitter molecules for activation of postsynaptic receptors.


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