1 / 9

Disciplinary Foundations of the Computational Sciences: Discuss

ICLS Conference 2 nd July 2010, Chicago Sally Fincher. Disciplinary Foundations of the Computational Sciences: Discuss. Where does CS “sit”?. Computer Science is: in Kuhn’s (Kuhn, 1962) terms “paradigmatic”, that is it has clear ways of defining, ordering and investigating knowledge

melody
Download Presentation

Disciplinary Foundations of the Computational Sciences: Discuss

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. ICLS Conference 2nd July 2010, Chicago Sally Fincher Disciplinary Foundations of the Computational Sciences: Discuss

  2. Where does CS “sit”? • Computer Science is: • in Kuhn’s (Kuhn, 1962) terms “paradigmatic”, that is it has clear ways of defining, ordering and investigating knowledge • it is in Biglan’s taxonomy (Biglan, 1973a) a “hard, applied, non-life” discipline • as Donald reports (Donald, 2002), when our students graduate we expect them to be able to do “hard thinking”, to apply structured knowledge to unstructured problems. • Computer Science is: • in Kuhn’s (Kuhn, 1962) terms “paradigmatic”, that is it has clear ways of defining, ordering and investigating knowledge • it is in Biglan’s taxonomy (Biglan, 1973a) a “hard, applied, non-life” discipline • as Donald reports (Donald, 2002), when our students graduate we expect them to be able to do “hard thinking”, to apply structured knowledge to unstructured problems. Incidentally, Kuhn considered education as pre-paradigmatic: “characterized by a high level of disagreement as to what constitutes new knowledge, what are appropriate methods for inquiry”. What, I wonder, would he have thought of the Learning Sciences?

  3. What do we do? “Every discipline has its distinctive ways of knowing, which it identifies with the activities it regards as its own: anthropologists do fieldwork, architects design buildings, monks meditate, and carpenters make things out of wood. Each discipline wears its defining activity as a badge of pride in a craftworker’s embodied competence ... [our] distinctive activity is building things, specifically computers and computer programs. Building things, like fieldwork and meditation and design cannot be reduced to the reading and writing of books. To the contrary, it is an enterprise grounded in a routine daily practice. Sitting in the lab and working on gadgets or circuits or programs, it is an inescapable fact that some things can be built and others cannot ...”

  4. Apprenticeship? • Mark: “We know little about learning concepts, because we (and our students) focus on skills.” • Trouble is, important components of our craft are invisible to the naked eye, and hard to share with others (no apprehensible artefacts) – no “studio” or “shop” for us.

  5. Math? • Ulrich: “Programming is a constructive activity” and “Computer science abstraction: invention of mental & machine interpretable formalised schemas to describe data structures and processing strategies”“There is no magic” • Like math, our representations (programs & programming language) are the stuff of our work – not representations of something else (like molecular models, or archaeologist’s maps, or architect’s blueprints)

  6. Making software with others? • Yasmin: Fluency, Literacy. “Not just code” “If not in the computer clubhouse, where are they going to become engaged with programming?” • Like other human & design sciences, we have a focus on people and their needs ... community motivation for engagement (Scratch re-mixes), places and spaces for collaborative development (computer clubhouses), interdisciplinary projectwork...

  7. Kinship? I invite you to sit for a moment and ponder what – if any – disciplinary similarities there are between CS and your own area ... ... for teaching and learning. And I invite the panellists to suggest complements, or bridges, to other disciplinary practices, too.

  8. References • Agre, P. E. (1997) Computation and Human Experience, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. • Biglan, A. (1973a). The Characteristics of Subject Matter in Different Academic Areas. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(3), 195-203. • Biglan, A. (1973b). Relationships between Subject Matter Characteristics and the Structure and Output of University Departments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(3), 204-213. • Donald, J. G. (2009). The Commons: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters. In C. Kreber (Ed.), The University and its Disciplines: Teaching and Learning Within and Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries. Oxford: Routledge, Taylor and Francis. • Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.

  9. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

More Related