Getting students to ask good questions.

Neil Sinhababu (aka the Ethical Werewolf) lays out one approach to making an impression in a job interview teaching demo:

Before giving my job talk, N[ational] U[niversity of] S[ingapore] had me give an hour-long presentation to the graduate students and advanced undergraduates to prepare them for the talk and also evaluate my teaching abilities. Since my talk was on the Humean theory of motivation, I taught them about the puzzle involving cognitivism, internalism, and the Humean theory — if you accept all three, you end up having to say that humans can’t make moral judgments, so you’d better deny at least one of the three. I’d planned the talk to include about 20 minutes of student questions, but a third of the way through, the students hadn’t asked me anything.
So I looked at them and tried a trick that I had spontaneously come up with in the previous session of the lecture I’ve been teaching at Texas. I said, “If someone asks a question, and it’s a good question, I’m going to dance.” Amid lots of giggling, a brave young man raised his hand and asked a question — I’ve forgotten what it was now, but it was good, and the students laughed again when they saw me dancing. After that, good questions flowed freely. When students see that their teacher is willing to do comical and mildly embarrassing things to reward student participation, they get the idea that class really is a place where they’re suppose to participate.
I wondered at the time what the NUS faculty evaluating me thought of that stunt. They didn’t express emotion in any obvious way, and it seemed kind of high-risk, high-reward — would I look like a dynamic, exciting teacher, or a maniac?

Neil totally got the job — so you might want to congratulate him. Then you can ask for advice on your own dance moves.

Honesty, diplomacy, independence, and solidarity in public discussions about science.

At DrugMonkey, PhysioProf explores the rules of engagement between grad students in journal club and seminar presentations (building off of interesting explorations of this question from A Lady Scientist, Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hyde, and Acmegirl — all of which you should click through to read in their entirety). I’m late to the party, but I wanted to share some thoughts on the balance here between the intellectual aspects and the human aspects of questioning within the tribe of science.

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Trying to understand framing (III): the example of stem cell research.

I haven’t given up yet. You know I’m still looking for more clarity on the basic premises of framing. I tried to work out what does and does not fall within the framing strategy in a flowcharted example and (again) came away with a bunch of unanswered questions.
This round, I’m going to look at an example from the Nisbet and Scheufele article in The Scientist (a link to the PDF given here. I’ll confess that I’m still confused, but I think I’m getting closer to identifying precisely what I’m confused about.
Here’s what Nisbet and Scheufele say in The Scientist article about communication about stem cell research:

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Trying to understand framing (II): draw me a picture.

You’ll remember that I tried to work out precisely what was being claimed in the premises behind framing set out by Chris Mooney. At the end of this exercise, I was left with the hunch that one’s optimal communication strategy — and how much scientific detail it will require — might depend an awful lot on what kind of message you’re trying to get across to your audience, to the point where trying to generalize about framing doesn’t seem very helpful. At least, it’s not helpful to me as I’m still trying to understand the strategy.
So, I’m hopeful that those who are hip to the framing thing can help me work through a less general example, presented on the hand-drawn flowchart below:

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The women who taught me science.

Since March is Women’s History Month, I thought it might be appropriate to recognize some women who were a part of my history — namely, the women who taught me chemistry and physics. (This shouldn’t be interpreted as a slight against the women who taught me biology — I simply don’t remember them as well — nor against the men who taught me science. They made an impact on me, but this post isn’t about them.)

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Why more racial diversity in the science blogosphere would be a good thing

Since Alice and Sciencewoman and DrugMonkey and Razib are discussing it (and because Zuska has discussed it before, including in real life), I wanted to say something about my reaction to the observation that science blogosphere in general, and ScienceBlogs in particular, seems pretty white:
I’d noticed that, too! And I’d like it a lot if there were more racial diversity among the science bloggers and the blogging scientists.
There would be some clear benefits to achieving more diversity — but there might also be costs, and looking at who would bear those costs seems pretty important.

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A cool science and engineering challenge for curious kids.

Speaking of science fairs, if you know of kids (grades 5-12) in the San Francisco Bay Area who are looking for a challenge, this one might be of interest:

It is not too late to participate in this year’s Tech Challenge. The Tech Museum of Innovation’s 21st annual Tech Challenge is designed to get at the heart of innovation for young people and is geared to the California Math, Science and Language Arts standards. This year’s Tech Challenge focus is on the need for safe clean drinking water. One in five people in the world do not have regular access to safe drinking water. The challenge: design a simple device to move water from the stream up to the village. With no electricity available, the flow of the stream needs to power the water mover.

An intriguing problem, no? Here are the challenge details:

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