Representing Dialectical Arguments

The purpose of this paper is to present and contrast two approaches to representing the structure of complex, dialectical arguments. Previous research has focused mainly on representing single arguments presented by a single arguer; this analysis examines the naturalistic give and take of dialectical argumentation among fourth graders. One approach to representing dialectical arguments is the argument network approach, which views the arguments as webs of interlocking premises and conclusions. The second approach is the causal network approach, which treats many of the ideas presented in the discussions as events linked in causal, narrative sequences. The two approaches capture different but complementary aspects of the structure of the arguments

Are Scientific Theories that Predict Dat a Mor e Believable than Theories that Retrospectively Explain Data ? A Psychological Investigation

Philosophers have disagreed about whether theories that make successful predictions are more believable than theories that merely explain data that have aheady been discovered. Predictivists believe that theories that make successful predictions have an edge over theories that offer only retrospective explanations of the same data. Nonpredictivists maintain that whether a theory predicts data or explains data retrospectively is irrelevant to the believability of the theory. The purpose of this paper is to report on three psychological experiments designed to determine whether undergraduates behave as predictivists or nonpredictivists when they evaluate theories. Results indicate that subjects behaved as nonpredictivists when one theory predicted a body of data and a second theory was devised later to explain the same data retrospectively. However, subjects behaved as predictivists in the situation in which a theory retreated in the face of anomalous data by adding an auxiliary hypothesis; for instance, theories that predicted data by adding the necessary auxiliary hypotheses before the data came in were more believable than theories that added the auxiliary hypothesis in reaction to the data. These results suggest that cognitive models of theory choice that assume that people are nonpredictivists may require modification

Insensitivity of the elastic proton-nucleus reaction to the neutron radius of 208Pb

The sensitivity--or rather insensitivity--of the elastic proton-nucleus reaction to the neutron radius of 208Pb is investigated using a non-relativistic impulse-approximation approach. The energy region (Tlab=500 MeV and Tlab=800 MeV) is selected so that the impulse approximation may be safely assumed. Therefore, only free nucleon-nucleon scattering data are used as input for the optical potential. Further, the optical potential includes proton and neutron ground-state densities that are generated from accurately-calibrated models. Even so, these models yield a wide range of values (from 0.13 fm to 0.28 fm) for the poorly known neutron skin thickness in 208Pb. An excellent description of the experimental cross section is obtained with all neutron densities. We have invoked analytic insights developed within the eikonal approximation to understand the insensitivity of the differential cross section to the various neutron densities. As the diffractive oscillations of the cross sections are controlled by the matter radius of the nucleus, the large spread in the neutron skin among the various models gets diluted into a mere 1.5% difference in the matter radius. This renders ineffective the elastic reaction as a precision tool for the measurement of neutron radii.Comment: 17 pages with 5 figure

Relativistic Green's function approach to charged-current neutrino-nucleus quasielastic scattering

A relativistic Green's function approach to inclusive quasielastic charged-current neutrino-nucleus scattering is developed. The components of the hadron tensor are written in terms of the single-particle Green's function, which is expanded on the eigenfunctions of the nuclear optical potential, so that final state interactions are accounted for by means of a complex optical potential but without a loss of flux. Results for the (neutrino_mu, mu-) reaction on 16O and 12C target nuclei are presented and discussed. A reasonable agreement of the flux-averaged cross section on 12C with experimental data is achieved.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Conventional and unconventional approaches to exchange rate modelling and assessment

We examine the relative predictive power of the sticky price monetary model, uncovered interest parity, and a transformation of net exports and net foreign assets. In addition to bringing Gourinchas and Rey's new approach and more recent data to bear, we implement the Clark–West procedure for testing the significance of out-of-sample forecasts. The interest rate parity relation holds better at long horizons and the net exports variable does well in predicting exchange rates at short horizons in sample. In out-of-sample forecasts, we find evidence that our proxy for Gourinchas and Rey's measure of external imbalances outperforms a random walk at short horizons as do some of the other models, although no single model uniformly beats the random walk forecast. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57920/1/354_ftp.pd

Aims in the practice of historiography: An interview study with Finnish historians

Many recent approaches to history education—such as ones related to historical thinking, historical reasoning, or inquiry-based learning—have brought the practice of historiography (i.e. historical research and writing) to the center the learning about history. Students are to learn about how historical knowledge is constructed, and this is often pursued by instructional methods such as modeling or simulating expert historians’ practices in classrooms. In this paper, we approach historiography primarily as an epistemic practice that shaped in part by (historians’) aims or goals.  Understanding those aims can contribute significantly to our understanding of the historical inquiries that ensue. Yet education has not made these aims a central focus of research or instruction. Therefore, we explored academic historians’ aims in their practices of historiography. We interviewed 26 Finnish historians about their ongoing research endeavors. Our results display a range of aims in academic historiography, including general epistemological concepts (e.g. knowledge), dialogical aims (e.g. question existing ideas), textual products, dissemination (e.g. popularizing), bringing about societal change (e.g. influence sense of possibilities), connection to present, and emotions. These findings improve our understanding of the diversity of historiography as an intentional practice, and thus provide a better ground for developing the kind of history education that builds on historians’ practices.</p

Historians and conceptual change in history itself: The domain as a unit of analysis

Along their path towards expertise, historians undergo conceptual changes. The purpose of this theoretical paper is to argue that conceptual change in history involves, first, a fundamental shift from an understanding of history as the past to an understanding of history as human production. And second, expert conceptual change involves understanding multiple approaches to the production of history. Each approach is associated with constraints on historical concepts and meta-concepts. We outline differences and similarities between these broad approaches through a framework that merges epistemic cognition and historical theory. Currently, there exists no singular conception of history to set as an unproblematic aim of epistemic education, and conceptual change must therefore embrace the aim of understanding of multiple conceptions.</p

Innovating Pedagogy 2017: Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers. Open University Innovation Report 6

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This sixth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Learning In a NetworKed Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE). Themes: • Big-data inquiry: thinking with data • Learners making science • Navigating post-truth societies • Immersive learning • Learning with internal values • Student-led analytics • Intergroup empathy • Humanistic knowledge-building communities • Open Textbooks • Spaced Learnin