PG's Ponderings

This week – a Humanities response Where do you stand? Engage in the discussion. Humanities perspective is needed in all global challenges The key conviction around which the debate swirls is that the world desperately needs the insights of the humanities. Socio-economic progress, developmental challenges and the intelligent addressing of complex world issues require a combination of skills drawn from the humanities, social sciences and Stem subjects to design and deliver holistic and fully informed solutions. Increasingly, development agencies assert that technologically sound, engineering-based projects are failing because they don't take sufficient account of the cultural context. These projects, in concept, design and implementation, lack the human perspective that recognises that no global issue, developmental problem or socio-economic challenge can be fully understood, let alone resolved, without real evidence of how the local community and the rest of humanity are experiencin...

This information is gleaned from various sources that support the move towards a STEM focussed learning environment with an interesting website listed in the end. Where do you stand? Engage in the discussion. STEM Education The changing world economic conditions have placed pressure on all economies to re-examine their commitment to public science investment. The emphasis on supporting business expenditure on R&D has grown and there is increasing expectation that science will support economic recovery through addressing immediate industry and firm needs. A quality science education will be an absolutely critical part of this equation. What's at Stake? New Zealand will succeed in the global marketplace by doing what we do best, which is harnessing the talents and ingenuity of our people. This kind of innovation however isn't born in the boardroom or on the factory floor. It doesn’t begin in a basement workshop or a research laboratory. That’s where the payoff happens. It sta...

Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about it is a process of self-observation and self-evaluation. We identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching. Why it is important? Many teachers already think about their teaching and talk to colleagues about it too. You might think or tell someone that "My lesson went well" or "My students didn't seem to understand" or "My students were so badly behaved today. "However, without more time spent focussing on or discussing what has happened, we may tend to jump to conclusions about why things are happening. We may only notice reactions of the louder students. Reflective teaching therefore implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analysing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes. If a...

Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked. They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking. They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritica...