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.

Electric dreams

All I remember is that I made some connections in my dream.  Everything else but the ideas have receded away.  I don’t even recall the context:  Was I giving a talk?  Was I writing?  Was I talking to my sup?  Or, was I just playing around with the ideas in my research? It feels like it was during some talk in my dream, but I can’t be too sure.  And during the dream, it seemed like such a big deal, an A-ha/Eureka experience.  Now that I’m awake, I almost feel like I had known it all along.

Connecting dots in a dream

Plato’s cave revisited

The morning is half-gone, and I’m staring at the blank wall of my computer screen.  If Plato were right and we are prisoners in a cave, what I would do to unchain myself and step out into the light!   There in the sun, I would behold the things as they are, and not just the blurry shadows they cast.

Figuring out which is which

In the midst of it all, I find myself asking the disturbing question whether I’ve actually ended up putting my carriage before the horse.

Part I of my survey (based on Kuhn & Park) will tell yield teachers’ epistemological world views (or stances or positions).  It will tell me if they are absolutist, multiplist, or evaluative in the different domains.

Part II (based on Chan & Elliot) will tell me about their specific epistemological beliefs–or dimensions of their epistemologies–about:

Jumbo

Storming outside as I go through my notes from two months ago.  They have been untouched since Canberra, where I read a lot of the essential readings.  There in the Jesuit House of Writers, I actually didn’t write a single word, but I believe time was unwasted.

Now I’m trying to wrap my mind around all that stuff again.  In other words, restarting.  Ah the travails of a struggling scholar.

Exploring the landscape

The scene I behold each afternoon I walk home

I’ve been reading long-overdue “seminal” articles since yesterday.  It’s a good way to remember the things I’ve forgotten about this research, as well as a great opportunity to put things together, make connections, and synthesize. I’m basically exploring the landscape of epistemologies–that’s how I’d describe what I’ve been doing these days, and it’s funny how it seems to keep changing each time I visit.  Have I been away that long?