Illusion of Knowledge

Interesting write up by Daniel Simons, co-author of "Invisible Gorilla" on how best to detect and overcome the illusion of knowledge. We normally mistake familiarity with deeper understanding and this leads to what is known as the "illusion of knowledge." What is most interesting about the "illusion of knowledge" is that it is so easy to detect but then how seldom do we actually detect and rectify it. The write-up below is an eye opener.

Think you know the best way to study? Better test yourself.

By Daniel Simons, on January 25th, 2011

Imagine you’re taking an introductory psychology class and you have to study for your first test. You’ve read the assigned text, and now you three more days to prepare. What should you do?

1. Re-read the text once more each day
2. Spend each day studying the text to identify critical concepts and the links among them
3. Quiz yourself the first day, reread the text the second day, and quiz yourself again the third day

Do you think you know the answer?

Students in my introductory psychology class regularly come to my office hour after failing the first exam to ask what they did wrong. Some even claim to have spent hours re-reading the text, highlighting important concepts, and even taking notes. Where did they go wrong?

In The Invisible Gorilla, Chris Chabris and I argue that these students fell victim to the Illusion of Knowledge—they thought they had a deeper understanding of the material than they actually did. But why did they have that mistaken intuition? The answer seems to be that they mistook familiarity and fluency for real understanding.

The same principle explains why you might think you know how a toilet works when all you really understand is how to work a toilet—your familiarity with using a toilet leads you to the false impression that you know far more than you actually do. What’s most remarkable about the illusion of knowledge is how easily we can overcome it. What’s most disturbing is how rarely we actually do.

To determine whether you have genuine knowledge about toilets, just ask yourself a few diagnostic questions and force yourself to answer. For example, how does water fill up the bowl? What causes the water to leave the bowl? Why does water leave the tank? Each time you can produce the correct answer, ask yourself a slightly deeper, next-step question. Eventually, you will reach the limits of your knowledge. You’ll know what you don’t know.

The same principle applies to studying and learning a text. If you read the text over repeatedly, you will familiarize yourself with it, but you won’t know the limits of your knowledge. Only by testing whether you can produce the answers yourself can you verify what you know. And, in a study just published online in Science, Karpicke and Blunt find that testing yourself leads to more effective learning and retention than does re-reading the text repeatedly or even mapping the core concepts of the text. It works because it overcomes the illusion of knowledge. Forcing yourself to test your knowledge is the most reliable way to identify the limits of your knowledge.

The reason my students come to me after failing their exam is that they have the wrong intuitions about what makes for effective learning. They thought that reading the text repeatedly would engender the best learning, and it apparently never occurred to them to check their own understanding. The same was true for Karpicke & Blunt’s subjects. They predicted that repeated studying would lead to better learning than would trying to retrieve what they had already learned. That is, they favored the approach that would lead to illusory knowledge rather than real knowledge.

Source cited:

Karpicke JD, & Blunt JR (2011). Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping. Science (New York, N.Y.)PMID: 21252317

Invisible Gorilla

I recently read a very interesting review on this book and I am yet to get hold of a copy of this. Find below an overview of the book taken from their website. Alternately one can try out the link below:

http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/overview.html

Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself-and that's a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, we use a wide assortment of stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to reveal an important truth: Our minds don't work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we're actually missing a whole lot. 

We combine the work of other researchers with our own findings on attention, perception, memory, and reasoning to reveal how faulty intuitions often get us into trouble. In the process, we explain:

• Why a company would spend billions to launch a product that its own analysts know will fail
• How a police officer could run right past a brutal assault without seeing it
• Why award-winning movies are full of editing mistakes
• What criminals have in common with chess masters
• Why measles and other childhood diseases are making a comeback
• Why money managers could learn a lot from weather forecasters

Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We're sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our mind with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we're continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement. 

The Invisible Gorilla reveals the numerous ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it's more than a catalog of human failings. In the book, we also explain why people succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. In short, we try to give you a sort of "x-ray vision" into your own minds, with the ultimate goal of helping you notice the invisible gorillas in your own life.

Blog: 

http://theinvisiblegorilla.com/blog/

Authors:

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons met at Harvard University in 1997, where they began to collaborate on research. In 2004 they received the Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology, awarded for "achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think," for the experiment that inspired The Invisible Gorilla. They continue to work together on new research projects, articles, and their blog.

Christopher Chabris

Chris received his B.A. in computer science and his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University, where he was also a Lecturer and Research Associate for many years. He is now Assistant Professor of Psychology at Union College in Schenectady, New York, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Neurology at Albany Medical College, and a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. His research focuses on two main areas: how people differ from one another in mental abilities and patterns of behavior, and how cognitive illusions affect our decisions. He has published papers on a diverse array of topics, including human intelligence, beauty and the brain, face recognition, the Mozart effect, group performance, and visual cognition. Chris also writes occasionally for the Wall Street Journal. Chris is also a chess master and poker amateur.

Daniel Simons

Daniel Simons is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois. Simons received his B.A. in Psychology and Cognitive Science from Carleton College and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Cornell University. He then spent five years on the faculty at Harvard University before moving to Illinois in 2002. His scholarly research focuses on the limits of human perception, memory, and awareness, and he is best known for his research showing that people are far less aware of their visual surroundings than they think. His work is published in top scientific journals and is discussed regularly in the popular media. His studies and demonstrations have been exhibited in more than a dozen science museums worldwide. In his spare time, he enjoys juggling, bridge, and chess.

Globalization

I was recently going through an excellent article on "Globalization"  titled "The Dark Side of Globalization" by Jorge Heine and Ramesh Thakur and some of the critical points mentioned in the article are highlighted below:

1. Although we may not have yet reached the end of history globalization has brought us to the end of geography as we know it. The compression of time and space triggered by the third industrial revolution, since the 1980s has fundamentally changed the way we interact with our environment.
2. Globalization has been in the nature of a double edged weapon. While on the one hand it has ushered in an era of prosperity leading to a rise in the overall standards of living based on cross border exchange of goods, services, capital, technology, ideas, information, legal systems and people on the other hand it has also led to the rise of corporate imperialism that plunders and profiteers riding on the back of rampant consumerism.
3. Globalization is not uncontrolled. The movement of people is highly restricted and the flow of capital asymmetric. Overseas development assistance from rich to poor countries has totalled $50-80 billion per year while in the same period, every year, $500-800 billion of illegal funds have been sent from poor to rich countries.
4. The benefits and costs of linking and de-linking are unequally distributed. While industrialized countries are largely interdependent developing countries are largely independent of each other in their economic relations and further the latter are largely dependent on industrialized countries.
5. There is a skewed distribution of income an among and within statesd assets with less number of people controlling more. This has implications for social and political stability among and within states.
6. Interdependence amongst unequals translates into dependence of some on international markets which function under the dominance of others as proved by the global financial crisis which severely impinged upon the economic sovereignty of the developing nations.     

To know more read on the complete book - The Dark Side of Globalization, UNU Press, 2011.

Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Learning Activity Types: Curriculum-based Technology Integration Reframed

This interesting paper critically analyzes extant approaches to technology integration in teaching, arguing that many current methods are technocentric, often omitting sufficient consideration of the dynamic and complex relationships among content, technology, pedagogy, and context. This paper recommends using the technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) framework as a way to think about effective technology integration, recognizing technology, pedagogy, content and context as interdependent aspects of teachers’ knowledge necessary to teach content-based curricula effectively with educational technologies. It offers TPACK-based “activity types,” rooted in previous research about content-specific activity structures, as an alternative to existing professional development approaches and explain how this new way of thinking may authentically and successfully assist teachers’ and teacher educators’ technology integration efforts. Check out the link below for the complete paper.

http://punya.educ.msu.edu/publications/HarrisMishraKoehler-JRTESumm09.pdf

Inauguration of Zonal Centre in RNIASE Cuttack

The Zonal Centre in Radhanath Training College Cuttack was inaugurated on the 14th of January 2011 by  Pratap Jena, Hon'ble Minister School and Mass Education Department. Debasis Samantray, MLA Cuttack Barabati, Soumendra Ghosh, Mayor, Cuttack Municipal Corporation and Prof. Dr. Sevak Tripathy, Director TE and SCERT were the other dignitaries who graced the occasion. 222 teachers from 34 secondary schools of Cuttack and Kendrapada district will be trained here in techno-pedagogy, over a 18 day training period.

Kalahandi - Nature Shots

I was in Kalahandi recently for the RCFCE District Level Sensitization Workshop and was pleasantly surprised by the greenery all around and the dense forest cover just on the outskirts of Bhawani Patna, the capital city. For a person visiting the place for the first time and who has  grown up reading about the drought conditions prevailing in the district, I was almost shell shocked as I was expecting to visit a somewhat god forbidden land, where recalcitrant bureaucrats are transferred on punitive postings. As far as the workshop is concerned it went off quite well and was well organized. The participants were within control and the questions raised by them were at least manageable as they were within the ambit of RTE - which of course means less of histrionics and fireworks. Have a look at the slide show below for some of the workshop photographs.

Status of Primary Education in India

As I sit alone in the circuit house in Bhawanipatna, today evening, going through the presentation for tomorrows RTE Sensitization Workshop, I am lucky to get hold of an excellent article available on the web, on the status of Primary Education in India, written by Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, and published in the Hindu in February 09. Mentioned below is an extract of the article covering the critical issues in this area.

• According to the ‘EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010’ (UNESCO), India’s rank was 105 among 128 countries. And it continues to figure, along with a bunch of African and one or two Asian countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, in the group of countries with a low educational development index (EDI).
• In 2001 also India ranked 105 among 127 countries. In 2007 India was behind not only countries such as Norway, Japan and Germany that figure at the top, but also several Latin American, African and Asian developing countries. These countries, which are economically poorer than India, include Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Bhutan, Maldives and Cambodia. Only a score of countries such as Madagascar, Laos, Malawi, Burundi, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Niger are behind India. 
• The enrolment ratio in primary education — both gross and net enrolment ratios — has improved over the years. The ‘adjusted’ net enrolment ratio in primary education is 94 per cent in 2007 (this includes children of the relevant age group enrolled in primary or secondary schools), according to the Global Monitoring Report. This figure is much higher than that in Sweden, Switzerland, and many countries that belong to the groups that have high and medium EDI figures.
• But India’s performance with respect to all the other three components of EDI, namely, adult literacy, gender-specific EFA (Education for All) index, and “survival rate” to Grade V, is indeed appalling. The gender index is only 0.84 in India, compared to figures above 0.9 in all countries of high and medium EDI countries (except Zambia); only 66 per cent of adults in India are literate, compared to above 80 per cent in most countries that figure among the high and medium EDI groups. 
• Perhaps the most worrisome of all is the poor survival rate. Only 66 per cent of the children enrolled in Grade I survive to Grade V in India, that is, as much as 34 per cent of the children enrolled in Grade I drop out before reaching Grade V.
•  A 90 to 95 per cent net enrolment ratio will have no meaning if there is also a 34 per cent dropout rate. Rapid progress in net enrolment ratio is possible, but a more important challenge is to ensure that the children enrolled in schools progress through the system to complete the given cycle of schooling and even beyond. 
  
  
• Earlier research has shown that children drop out of school for three kinds of reasons. The first reason given is that schools are not attractive. A second reason involves economic constraints (poverty, direct costs of schooling and child labour) that do not allow continuation in schools. Thirdly, there are reasons including the lack of a tradition of going to or continuing in schools. 
• Unattractive school facilities represent the most important reason that pushes children out of schools. Economic constraints also matter very much, though they matter more for enrolment of children in schools than for their continuation in schools. ‘Other’ reasons are not that important. 
• On an average there are only three classrooms per primary school in India, and there are only three teachers per school. About 14 per cent of the schools have a single classroom each, and single-teacher schools constitute a similar proportion. While the national norm is one teacher for every 40 students in primary schools, 30 per cent of the schools have a ratio above this norm. In some States like Bihar the ratio at the State level is 1:59, where there are 92 students on average per classroom. Only 85 per cent of the schools in the country have drinking water facilities; 37 per cent do not have toilets; only 44 per cent have separate toilet facilities for girls. Hardly one-fourth have electricity connection; only 5.7 per cent have a computer. Hardly half the schools have any medical facilities. About 32 per cent of the primary schools require major or minor repairs to buildings and so on.

RTE Sensitization Workshop - Nuapada and Raygada

Just finished conducting two sensitization workshops on the RCFCE Act 2009, in Nuapada and Raygada. While the former was held on the 29th of December 2010 the latter was held on the 5th of January 2011. The workshop in both the districts, was inaugurated by the respective collectors and had an eclectic mix of people, comprising of representatives of the local bodies such as the zilla parishads, civil society organizations, media, parents, government departments, teachers, students etc. The workshops followed a presentation sequence decided in advance - discussion of the bare act chapter wise, discussion of key concepts by linking them with the relevant sections of the act and the state rules,Q&A session followed by a discussion on the Rashtriya Madhyamik Sikshya Abhiyan in the second session. 

Both the workshops elicited a good response although there were questions for questions sake as is common in all the workshops with people asking all sorts of questions ranging from textbooks (why are they not being given on time), to the problem of endemic teacher shortages and what is being done about that as part of the act, to molestation attempts by teachers in Raygada, on the day the workshop was being conducted (raised by a journalist in Raygada) etc. Questions covered the entire spectrum from interesting and thought provoking to stupid (attention garnering) to those which were utter nuisance. We had answers for most of the questions related to the act which were basically clarifications while for the others we could only sit, listen and watch the mayhem till tempers calmed down. All said it was an interesting experience. 

In Orissa the state rules have been notified and it is the second state in the country to do so after Sikkim. The implementation of the act is being planned in a very systematic way, starting with the notification of state rules, selection of State Level Trainers, conduct of sensitization workshops in all the thirty districts, selection of district level trainers and their training and conduct of sensitization workshops at the block level in each of the districts by these trainers. Gram Sabhas are being planned from April to June with a view to sensitizing the members and the masses as regards this act. A convergence plan has been worked out with six departments - Rural Development, SC/ST Welfare, Labour, Health, Women and Child Development and Panchayati Raj with the aim of implementing the act in the most comprehensive manner. A RTE Cell has been created at the state level with the support of the UNICEF, spearheading all the activities related to the implementation of the act at the state level.