Are you religious?

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One of my research questions has to do with what sociologists call “religiosity.”  An instrument developed by Gottlieb (2007) assesses the following five measures of religiosity:  religious self-identification (“How religious are you?”), religious beliefs (i.e., in God’s existence and the afterlife), religious practices, religious values, and religious background.  The problem with the questionnaire is that there are only ten items designed to measure the above, resulting in an average of two items per measure.

Weaving it together

Yesterday on the train to Oxford and back to Paddington, I re-read David Moshman’s 2007 article.  Interesting especially because of two fresh insights of his that I hadn’t noticed in my first reading:

First, that children develop epistemic cognition but only thw type that pertains to particular judgments and specific matters. Only in adolescence and adulthood do general epistemological theories develop–i.e., epistemological worldviews and beliefs.

Writing in the balcony

Reading and writing in Cordon, France–also known as “the balcony of Mont Blanc.” It’s surreal to be chewing on teacher epistemology with the snow-capped Alps in one’s full view. I write this blog in the village cafe, located right beside the bakery. I walked down from Richard and Marite’s chalet, nearly freezing in the cold since it had snowed this morning. But breathing the fresh mountain air and beholding the breathtaking view made the walk all worth it.

The big deal with epistemology

City of motorcycles

Flying back to Manila this morning after two weeks of thinking about my thesis and wrestling with my writing. It’s been a great hiatus for me here in Taipei, which will always be for me the city of motorcycles.

The big ideas swirling in my head are all about why epistemology–those hidden beliefs about knowledge and knowing–are so important in education.  What’s the big deal with epistemology anyway–especially now that our school is beginning to offer this IB course Theory of Knowledge to our students? 

Chewing on Gottlieb

Spent the afternoon “thinking on paper,” trying to understand Gottlieb‘s 8 epistemic types/orientations.  This typology is Gottlieb’s own attempt at making sense of his data.  He’s been against the epistemological hierarchy that so many researchers have assumed–i.e., the assumption of maturity and sophistication in the Evaluativist worldview vis-a-vis the Absolutist and Multiplist worldviews–claiming that particular ways of justifying knowledge may not be equally valued in other cultures.

Writing in Taipei

Kuangchi Program Service

This is the long-delayed Part II to Canberra.  Here’s where I resume my writing.  I will probably spend the first phase of it just recalling where I left off as I had done at the House of Writers in Canberra.

Knowledge, beliefs, truths

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I  stumbled over this Venn Diagram that represents the classical definition of knowledge and relates it to the concepts of truth and beliefs.  It’s a diagram worth thinking about as it may help allow ideas to connect and fall in the right places. 

More where it comes from

I was spent after my meeting with the teachers of Ateneo de Naga High School. It was my ninth session of presenting the results of the epistemological survey, so I didn’t really expect to learn anything new. But to my surprise, I still did. It might have been the engagement and interest of the teachers in the discussion that did it. I guess there’s always more where it comes from.

Justification

Sacred Heart teachers in a hesitant show of hands

Waiting to board in Mactan airport.  This afternoon we had a joint session of the Grade School and High School teachers of Sacred Heart School-Jesuit/Ateneo de Cebu (Why do some schools like all these tediously slashed names?).  I’m afraid the teachers enjoyed the air-conditioned auditorium and their comfortable chairs much more than the discussion. 

Tying loose ends

Tying loose ends

This morning I finished my last session here in Zamboanga, where most of the teachers in the Ateneo de Zamboanga Grade School, based on the survey results have a predominantly contextualist world view.