The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation

Going back at least to Duhem, there is a tradition of thinkingthat crucial experiments are impossible in science. I analyseDuhem's arguments and show that they are based on the excessivelystrong assumption that only deductive reasoning is permissiblein experimental science. This opens the possibility that someprinciple of inductive inference could provide a sufficientreason for preferring one among a group of hypotheses on thebasis of an appropriately controlled experiment. To be sure,there are analogues to Duhem's problems that pertain to inductiveinference. Using a famous experiment from the history of molecularbiology as an example, I show that an experimentalist versionof inference to the best explanation (IBE) does a better jobin handling these problems than other accounts of scientificinference. Furthermore, I introduce a concept of experimentalmechanism and show that it can guide inferences from data withinan IBE-based framework for induction.

1. Introduction
2. Duhem onthe Logic of Crucial Experiments
3. ‘The Most BeautifulExperiment in Biology’
4. Why Not Simple Elimination?
5. SevereTesting
6. An Experimentalist Version of IBE

   6.1 Physiologicaland experimentalmechanisms

   6.2 Explaining the data

   6.3IBE and the problemof untested auxiliaries

   6.4 IBE-turtlesall the way down

7. Van Fraassen's ‘Bad Lot’ Argument
8. IBE and Bayesianism
9. Conclusions

     

International research orientation of Swiss universities: self-regulated or politically imposed?

International openness is essential to science in small modern countries. The modernization of Swiss science and economy in the nineteenth century was promoted largely by foreigners: newly founded Swiss universities were staffed to a large extent by foreign professors, but students also came from abroad. Up to the middle of this century, the development of Swiss universities was marked by distinct successive phases of inviting in or shutting out international influence, depending mainly on changes in the political context. The international landscape of knowledge and science since the 1950s has undergone dynamic change. University structures were installed as a reaction to this dynamism. Patterns of international research orientation emerging in different universities and in the disciplinaryfields of business administration, chemistry and history are discussedin a comparative perspective.     

Professional development to increase teacher behavior‐specific praise: A single‐case design replication

Effective classroom instruction is contingent upon successful classroom management. Unfortunately, not all teachers successfully manage classroom behavior and need in‐service professional development. In this study, we replicated a targeted professional development approach that included a brief one‐on‐one training session and emailed visual performance feedback to increase novice teachers’ use of behavior‐specific praise, an evidence‐based classroom management skill. Dependent variables collected through direct observation included teachers’ behavior‐specific praise along with average student engagement and disruptions. Four elementary teachers participated and, based on a multiple‐baseline single‐case design, we found a functional relationship between the targeted professional development and teachers’ increased use of behavior‐specific praise. However, because of variability and one teacher's limited response, effect sizes were small for behavior‐specific praise and little change was observed in student behaviors. These findings warrant further research to determine which classroom management skills affect student behaviors overall, as well as continued evaluation of this professional development model and using school‐based coaches.     

Over reported and misunderstood? A study of teachers’ reported enactment and knowledge of inquiry-based science teaching

Science education reforms worldwide call on teachers to engage students in investigative approaches to instruction, like inquiry. Studies of teacher self-reported enactment indicate that inquiry is used frequently in the classroom, suggesting a high level of proficiency with inquiry that would be amenable to inquiry reform. However, it is unclear whether the high frequency of self-report is based on sound knowledge inquiry. In the absence of sound knowledge, high rates of self-reported enactment would be suspect. We conducted a study to measure teachers’ knowledge of inquiry as it related to the known, high frequency of reported enactment. We developed a multidimensional survey instrument using US reform documents and administered it to 149 K–12 teachers at a national science teachers’ conference. The majority of the teachers surveyed did not report inquiry enactment based on well-structured knowledge of inquiry. Interviews with participants showed how teachers could readily map non-inquiry activities onto inquiry statements taken directly from reform documents. From these results we argue that teachers often believed they were enacting inquiry, when likely they were not. We further reason that teachers may struggle to interpret and enact inquiry-related requirements of science education reform and will need support distinguishing inquiry from non-inquiry practices.     

The instructional design portfolio:

Conclusion In order to make PIHnet forum more usable and useful, we recently redesigned the forum tool based on findings from a survey, interviews and observations of user posting patterns. We also developed a journal tool to assist teachers with their personal reflection. Interviews with four users showed that the new forum was easy to use and effectively helped them communicate with other members. We are still developing the journal tool, so user experiences with the new journal tool have not been investigated yet. We will continue to improve the tools based on critical feedback from actual users.     

Time to confront Willis’s lads with a ballet class? A case study of educational orthodoxy and white working‐class boys

This is a retrospective study tracing the longer term effects on identity and aspiration of white working‐class boys from an area of high social deprivation. The boys were members of an acclaimed boys’ dance company and have been retrospectively interviewed as young men in their twenties. Documentary and film material dating from the time they were 14 year olds and the film Billy Elliot were used in the interviews. A media discourse driven by a view of boys ‘in crisis’ that is blind to social class and the difficulties faced by some girls was uncovered. This is found to pervade the entire Billy Elliot discourse, which focused on the sensation of a boy performing ballet rather than on the class background and historical context of the miners’ dispute. The paper questions the discourse of laddishness and the social identity that is attached to the term ‘lad’.