Education vs' Culture

1
Education vs. Culture

• W. M. Waite
• M. H. Jackson
• Diwan
• P. M. Leonardi
• University of Colorado
• Boulder, CO USA

2
Field Experiment

• Observe and interview for baseline
• Perform intervention
• Observe and interview for result

• 2 classes/semester since fall, 2000
• Over 130 interviews, standard protocol
• Field notes from participant observation
• Unobtrusive data student tool use, records

3
Performance Aspects of Culture

• Ritual practices in which members regularly
  engage
• Sociality norms for how people interact with one
  another
• Politics how a member influences others
• Enculturation how people acquire skills to
  behave as competent members
• Passion what should a member value

4
Ritual

• Procrastinate when approaching tasks
• Instantiates participant as an expert
• Hinders group interaction
• Begin project without understanding details
• Diving in and tinkering
• Hinders shared understanding
• Work individually

5
Sociality

• Boldly display ones own opinions, and disqualify
  opinions of peers
• Affirms ones status as an expert
• Hinders group discussion
• Deny peers technical and emotional support
• Dont give up and dont ask for help
• Hinders group cohesiveness

6
Politics

• Things are easier for me than for others
• Perpetuates one as a prodigy
• Group members who dont get it quickly become
  discouraged
• Constant comparison with others
• Serves to validate expertise
• Can have positive or negative effect in a group

7
Enculturation

• Learn to construct an in-depth knowledge base
• Builds expertise
• Supports effective teams who need experts
• Ignore process
• Individual has more flexibility
• Hinders effective group decision-making

8
Passion

• No evidence of passion in the interviews or
  observations
• Hinders group performance when there is no shared
  goal about which they are passionate
• Did not observe any capstone class
• Capstone projects often do result in passion
  about the shared goal

9
The Prototypical Engineer

• Maverick is a lone human tinkering with
  technology
• Macho has constant need for respect, to always
  have the right answer
• Technophile designs adroitly, has expert
  knowledge of theories and science
• Non-communicator discourages social interaction,
  technical discussions OK

10
Group Work Strategies

• Sequential segmentation I work on it for a
  while, then pass it along to you
• Parallel segmentation break it up and everyone
  do a piece
• Natural selection well each implement it and
  take the best
• Collaboration interact during the task

11
Is Collaboration Important?

• Collaboration is needed to support the other
  methods of working in groups
• Shared agreement on who is to do what when
• People learn judgment best in groups
• Talk each other out of unshared biases
• Collaboration is a tactic against 3OI
• Non-overlapping 2OI

12
Interventions

• Conversational classroom
• Teach students to grant authority to peers
• Teach students to take on authority granted by a
  peer
• Tree design
• Show that process is determined by task
• PL Detective
• Adjust grading criteria to reward collaboration