Uncertainty and Graphing in Discovery Work: Implications for and Applications in STEM Education PDF
Preview Uncertainty and Graphing in Discovery Work: Implications for and Applications in STEM Education
Wolff -Michael Roth Uncertainty and Graphing in Discovery Work Implications for and Applications in STEM Education Uncertainty and Graphing in Discovery Work ThiSisaFMBlankPage Wolff-Michael Roth Uncertainty and Graphing in Discovery Work Implications for and Applications in STEM Education Wolff-MichaelRoth UniversityofVictoria Victoria,BritishColumbia Canada ISBN978-94-007-7008-9 ISBN978-94-007-7009-6(eBook) DOI10.1007/978-94-007-7009-6 SpringerDordrechtHeidelbergNewYorkLondon LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2014941883 ©SpringerScience+BusinessMediaDordrecht2014 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionor informationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped.Exemptedfromthislegalreservationarebriefexcerpts inconnectionwithreviewsorscholarlyanalysisormaterialsuppliedspecificallyforthepurposeofbeing enteredandexecutedonacomputersystem,forexclusiveusebythepurchaserofthework.Duplication ofthispublicationorpartsthereofispermittedonlyundertheprovisionsoftheCopyrightLawofthe Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer.PermissionsforusemaybeobtainedthroughRightsLinkattheCopyrightClearanceCenter. ViolationsareliabletoprosecutionundertherespectiveCopyrightLaw. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexempt fromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication,neithertheauthorsnortheeditorsnorthepublishercanacceptanylegalresponsibilityfor anyerrorsoromissionsthatmaybemade.Thepublishermakesnowarranty,expressorimplied,with respecttothematerialcontainedherein. Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) Preface Rule7.Beforeattributinganyspecialqualitytothemindortothemethodofpeople,letus examine first the many ways through which inscriptions are gathered, combined, tied together, and sent back. Only if there is something to be explained once the networks havebeenstudiedshallwestarttospeakofcognitivefactors.(Latour1987,p.258) AspartofanextendedresearchprogramongraphingthatImaintainedoverthepast 20 years, there were also several long-term ethnographic studies of graphs and uncertainty in scientific discovery work. This book derives from one of these: a 5-yearethnographicstudyofoneadvancedscientificresearchlaboratoryassociated with a 5-year ethnographic study of one fish hatchery in particular where the scientificlaboratorysourcedmanyofitsspecimen.Becausethelaboratoryworked attheforefrontofitsfield(i.e.fishvision),thereweremanyoccasionstostudynot only(a)theuseoffamiliargraphsbutalso(b)graphsasameanstoarticulateand develop the thinking of the scientists and (c) the production and interpretation of data and graphs that were the ultimate outcome of the research and that the scientistsdidnotyetknowwhetherthesewouldpassmusterduringthepeerreview process. Such an approach is inthe spirit of the methodological proposal recently offeredtolearningscientistsconcerningthequestion“ofhowonemightrecognize a discovery without knowing in advance of what is available to be discovered” (KoschmannandZemel2009,p.200).Astheseauthors,Iamconcernedwithhow somethinginitiallyunknown–graphsandthescientificknowledgeclaimstheycan be used to support – becomes, through the corporeal and sensual practices of research scientists, transformed into something that is available to be known to humankind more generally. I am particularly interested in graphing in the face of uncertainty, which, as I show in the present book, is a steady way companion of scientistsinthecourseoftheirwork.Thus,attimesscientistshavesomethingthat they may denote to be “a crazy idea,” which subsequently turns into a stable scientific fact and at other times may just remain what it was. The story of the research reported here is of that kind. It therefore tells us a great deal about how scientistswork,howtheyuseandcometobefamiliargraphs,and,ultimately,how science,mathematics,andtechnologycometobeboundupwithoneanotherinthe mangleofpracticethatconstitutesthisworldinthewayweknowit. v vi Preface Thecoreofthisbookconsistsofaclosestudyofgraphinganduncertaintyina discoveryscience,fromtheveryearlydaysoftheinceptionoftheresearch,through thedatacollectionandinterpretationperiods,andtotheultimatepublicationofan articlethatprovidedmassiveevidenceagainstthereigningdogmainitiallyarticu- latedbyaNobelPrizewinner.Thecommonwayinourculturetocelebratemajor discoveriesistoascribeittotheskillsofoneormoreindividualscientists.Inthis book,Itakeadifferent tack,followingthepreceptsoftheseventhruleofmethod Bruno Latour had recommended for the study of scientists and engineers, and as reproducedhereintheopeningquotationtothispreface.Icameacrossthetextfrom which I culled this quotation in about 1990, the same year that I was reading a number of other ethnographies of science, including Laboratory Life: The Social ConstructionofScientificFacts(LatourandWoolgar1986)andTheManufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science (Knorr-Cetina1981).ItwasalsotheyearthatIreadCognitioninPractice:Mind, MathematicsandCultureinEverydayLife(Lave1988).Thethreebooksturnedmy lifearoundandprofoundlyinfluencedwhateventuallyshouldbecomemyacademic career. Adecadebefore,IhadcompletedanMScinPhysicsbuthadturnedtoteaching when the jobs for research physicists were scarce during an economic stagnation period atthe endofthe1970sandat the beginningofthe 1980s. With aminor in applied mathematics, it was not surprising that I would later do a PhD studying mathematicalcognitionandthecognitive developmentofadults.ThisIdidinthe College of Science and Technology at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. Here, my theories of knowing and learning were shaped by neo-Piagetian information processing approaches. It was after having returned to teaching physics in a private college preparatory school that I somehow came across and read the three above-mentioned books. It was during that summer of 1990thatIdecidedtobeginawholenewwayofresearchingcognitionandlearning andtolook atthedataIwastocollectinadifferentway.Myown background in science (physics) and applied mathematics – I also had done a statistics minor during my PhD work – allowed me to bring together the lines of work that I had found in those three books. It eventually led to the framing of graphing as social practice for rethinking mathematics and science education (Roth 1996; Roth and McGinn1997,1998),tothestudyofmathematicsamongtechniciansandscientists (Roth2003b),andtoinvestigationsofmathematicsindifferentworkplacesettings, amongfishculturists(Roth2005b)andelectricians(Roth2012b),andtothestudy ofgraphsandothermathematicalinscriptionsinscientificandengineeringjournals (Roth 2013c; Roth et al. 1999). In the course, I arrived at phenomenological, semiotic,andculturalhistoricalactivity-theoretictheoriesofgraphingineveryday settings, scientific and non-scientific settings alike (Roth 2003a, b; Roth etal.2002). The idea of studying graphing in the everyday world generally and among scientists more specifically came to me after one of my colleagues and then Preface vii graduate students (Michael Bowen) and I had found out that university science graduates,1somewithMastersofSciencedegrees,employedpowerfulmathemat- ical approaches with a significantly smaller frequency than pairs of eight-grade studentswhohadgonethroughacurriculuminwhichtheydesignedandconducted experimentsandreportedtheresultsthereoftotheirpeers(Rothetal.1998).2Atthe time, we were interested in developing curriculum that would induct school stu- dentstothe“authentic”practicesofscienceandhowstudentsmathematizedtheir experiences during an inquiry curriculum (Roth and Bowen 1994). We therefore decidedtoinvestigatehowscientistsandthoseintheprocessofbecomingscientists were using graphs in and as part of their discovery work. We began a series of ethnographicstudiesamonggraduate(RothandBowen1999b)andundergraduate honors students (Bowen et al. 1999; Roth and Bowen 2001a); and we conducted think-aloudstudieswithpracticingscientistsreadinggraphsculledfromintroduc- torytextbooksoftheirownfieldandfromtheirownpublications(Roth2012;Roth andBowen2001b,2003).Thesestudiesshowedthatscientistswerenottheperfect experts in graphing that they are often held out to be when looking at unfamiliar graphs,evenwhenthesegraphswerefromtheirownfield.Wecametounderstand– using the imagery of cannibals, missionaries, and converts – that there was a discontinuity in the graph-related practices at the boundary between people who engageinworkthatrequiresthemtotransformdataintographicalrepresentations andpeoplewho donothavehadsuch experiences(RothandBowen1999c).This boundary was independent of prior experience such that experienced scientists, technicians,andstudentsdidwellwhengraphingwasrelatedtotheirongoingwork but all of them did poorly when graphs were unfamiliar or related to unfamiliar phenomena. In the case of graphs from their work, on the other hand, all of these people were highlyfluent. These studiessubsequentlywere extendedtocover the mathematicsusedbyelectricians(Roth2014b),fishculturists(Roth2005a,b,c),or water technicians (Roth 2007). We also studied how scientists employed graphs while lecturing undergraduate students, finding out that scientists too talk about graphsininappropriateways(Roth2010;RothandBowen1999a). The present book constitutes a continuation and transformation of my past research endeavours. I describe and theorize the function of graphs and graphing inscientificdiscoveryworkfromasocialpracticeperspective.Inthiswork,graphs are topic (scientists talk about them), tool (scientists use graphs in the course of pursuingtheirresearchwork),andground(scientists’talkoccursoverandagainst graphs).Indiscoverywork,wherescientistsdonotinitiallyknowwhattomakeof graphs,thereisalotofuncertainty,andscientistsstrugglemuchaseveryoneelsein trying to produce sense-making talk related to graphs. Contrary to the belief that scientistsunproblematically“interpret”graphs,thechaptersinPartIIofthisbook showthatuncertaintyabouttheirresearchobjectistiedtouncertaintyinandofthe 1Theseweregraduateswhosubsequentlyenrolledina1-yearprofessionaldevelopmentprogram toobtainalicenseforteachingscienceinhighschools. 2IreturntotheworkfromwhichthisstudyemergedinPartIVofthisbook. viii Preface graphs. That is, scientists do not just interpret graphs and thereby find something out. Rather, scientists are caught up in a double bind: (a) to know what is in the graph,theyneedtoknowwhatitrefersto(shows)and(b)toknowwhatisshown, they need to know what is in the graph (Roth 2009; Chap. 4). It may, as in the presentstudy,takeseveralyearsofstruggleintheirworkplacebeforescientistsare sufficiently familiar with their equipment and the natural phenomena to have a senseaboutjustwhattheirgraphsare evidenceof(Chap. 7).Scientistsmayresist what eventually comes to be known as correct interpretations – leading, as in the present case, to a discovery that overthrows what has been a 60-year scientific canon. The present research shows that graphs turn out to stand to the entire research in a part–whole relation, where scientists not only need to be highly familiar with the contexts from which their data are extracted but also with the entire process by means of which the natural world comes to be translated into a graphicalformthatcanbeusedtomakethenaturalworldpresentagain.This,asI showinPartIVofthisbook,hasconsiderableimplicationsforscience,technology, engineering,andmathematicseducationat thesecondary andtertiarylevel andin vocationaltraining. AcrossChaps.2,3,4,5,6,7,and8,readersaretaken(a)fromthestagesinthe research that are characterized by radical uncertainty and a lot of fitting data to beliefs(b)tothefinalstagesoftheirresearchwhenscientistschangetheirwaysof looking at the data and, thereby, come to develop new ways of understanding. Rather than constituting abstract representations and skills, graphs and graphing turn out to be integral aspects of the totality of the research process. Only after everythinghas beensaidanddonedographs,inthe talkofthescientists, become something independent standing for something else: the scientific object. That is, graphs cannot be understood independently of everything else that makes their research, including the scientific instrumentation, the source of their specimens, their work habits, and a lot of detail about the different settings including the environmentalcontextsinwhichtheirspecimenswerecaught,theenvironmentin whichthesewerekeptuntilprocessing,andtheenvironmentofthelaboratoryitself. Thereisquiteabitofauto/ethnographyinvolvedinthisbook(Roth2005c),asI had been both a member of the scientific research team and studying it for the purposesofbetterunderstandingthesciences.The“auto-”inthetermreferstothe fact that the ethnographer also is a member of the “tribe” studied. The practices studied and described are not merely those of others but are the very practices I accomplishedasparticipantinthescientificresearch.Butthisdoesnotputmeina privilegedposition,for,asBakhtin(1981)notes,whoevertheauthoris,thenarra- tive form (genre) imposes the same kind of constraints and is associated with the samekindofexpectanciesonthepartofthereader.Butthismembershipprovides mewithaparticularhighdegreeoffamiliaritythatiscentraltotheadequacyofthe ethnographic account – a fact that also is apparent in the work of the natural sciencesasIreportitinPartII. The chapters of this book are written such that they may stand on their own, summarizing and pointing to relevant places in other chapters that readers are enticed but do not have to consult. For those who access and read the book in its Preface ix entirety, this constitutes a complete narrative of graphs and graphing in scientific discoveryworkfromtheinitialinceptionofastudytoitscompletion7yearslater with the published journal article. As part of a joint project, I had become part of this research team (being joint author on Temple et al. 2006, 2008), documenting theentireresearchprocessinwhichthecanon(whichhadledtoaNobelPrizefor theoriginalscientificdiscovery)cametobeoverthrown. The book, though written primarily for STEM educators, also should be of interesttothoseworkinginthefieldsofsocialstudiesorhistoryofscience,because it documents a scientific discovery that transcends the “social construction” of scientific knowledge.Thebookshould alsobeofinterest tothose concerned with workplacelearning,becauseitshowsthatgraphingisnotsomeabstractpracticeor social skill that scientists apply to new settings but that graphing is a local achievement that advances in the course of the unfolding research process as scientists become increasingly familiar with all aspects of their research. The work presented raises serious doubt about teaching graphs and graphing indepen- dent of the settings in which they are produced and used for the salient purposes athand. Inthisbook,Idrawonmaterialsthatalsohavefiguredinpeer-reviewedresearch journals(Roth2013a,b,d;RothandTemple2014).Butallofthesematerialshave been transformed to become integral part of a whole – the book – and this whole constituted a force that asked for reshaping the individual chapter texts. I am grateful to the publishers, including Springer, to copyrights that allow me to re-use materials. In most instances, in fact, the work by far exceeds what can be represented in a journal article because of length limitations to which journal articlesaresubjectto.Thus,inthesepages,Imobilizealotoftheoriginalmaterials thatnevermadeitintothepublishedarticles–becauseofthepage-limitationsthat print journals are subject to – but on which the articles were integrally based. In fact,itisonlyinthepagesofthisbookthatreaderswillreallyseescientistsatwork, forexample,thewaysinwhichtheyengageeachother.Andmuchofthisengage- mentisasmundaneasanyothersocietalsetting,wherepeoplegoaboutdoingthe thingsthattheynormallydoandinthewaystheynormallydothem.Incontrastto some popular conceptions, which are also spread in schools, science is not some special ability or endeavor – or is as special as any other practice (cooking, manufacture). It has emerged – both on cultural-historical and individual ontoge- netic grounds – from everyday common sense pursuits (Husserl 1976a). It is therefore founded upon the ordinary ways in which we conduct our lives. This, therefore, is my guiding thread throughout this book: to acknowledge scientific workasanextensionandparticularkindofeverydayhumanendeavorinthepursuit ofgettingtheday’sworkdone–eventhough,attimes,thisendeavorappearstobe moreesotericthanotherpursuits. No human endeavor is possible without all those others who, in one way or another, participate in relations that enable the production of a book such as this one. First and foremost I have to thank my scientific collaborator, Craig Hawryshyn,withwhomIjoinedefforttoinvestigatetheplaceswherecohosalmon areraised,aspectsofthelifehistoryofthesefishes,andtheknowledgeexchanges
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