tdaxp

Mountainrunner asks for 60 seconds of your time. What are your thoughts on Robots and War?

Pack your bags, look to the stars, and prepare to go in search of...

THE WARY STUDENT.



The first, and most important, result of this experiment will be...

Pack your bags, look to the stars, and prepare to go in search of...

THE WARY STUDENT.



This post will began by describing Cognitive Load, and continue by refreshing the viewr on Cooperative Behavior (previously discussed in The Wary Guerrilla). Last, today's contribution will discuss how these concepts work in the mind and, more important, in the classroom.

Pack your bags, look to the stars, and prepare to go in search of...

THE WARY STUDENT.



Scientific psychology began with behaviorism, an attempt to explain all responses in terms of stimuli. Cognitivism broadened the realm of scientific endevour by theorizing mental states that can be systematically examined. From this comes modern educational psychology, which attempts to apply cognitivism to educational settings.

Pack your bags, look to the stars, and prepare to go in search of... THE WARY STUDENT

Building off of Alford & Hibbing (2004; 2006a) and The Wary Guerrilla, this study proposes the existence of “wary students” whose default behavior is to help others but also go out of their way to punish perceived injustice. In particular, this paper looks at how issues of technologically-induced cognitive load such as occurs in many distance education settings can exacerbate these traits. To accomplish that this paper also relies on the research programs of John Sweller and Roger Bruning, as well as the other researchers mentioned in the bibliography.



The proposed research extends the findings of The Wary Guerrilla. The series found that there were several different game play types, the most retributatory of which was associated with absolutism and political conservatism. Additionally, the research rejected several more conventional hypothesis of the sort of person who would be a super-punisher. This is what science is: conjecture and refutation.



This series has five parts, besides this introduction. First, I will give an overview of educational psychology and its relation to the rest of the psychological sciences. Next, I tackle cognitive load and cooperative behavior, two elements of an irrational mind. Third, a series of experiments are proposed to determine how load and behavior interact. Last, I predict some of the results and give a bibliography of works cited.

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In Search Of, a tdaxp series
1. Educational Psychology
2. Load and Behavior
3. Experiments
4. Conclusions
5. Bibliography

May 22 (BEIJING) - Dan of tdaxp, a top-500 blogger, today announced the complete release of his noted web series, Redefining the Gap. Redefining the Gap is an innovative contribution to grand strategic analysis, combining the superb vision of New York Times best-selling author Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett with the power of hard numbers. Redefining the Gap, originally written for a graduate course in political science, was expanded and re-edited for the Internet. Redefining the Gap sheds new light Barnettian concepts, such as the "Functioning Core" and "Non-Integrating Gap," as well as ideas such as Thomas Hobbes' description of natural life as "nasty, brutish, and short."

"Basically," Dan remarked, "I took the description of 'the Gap' from The Pentagon's New Map, and applied simple statistical methods to see whether it worked or not." However, the analysis did not end there. "I was not content to see whether or not the model was good, but I wanted to see if it was actually better than existing models. So I used alternate and rival definitions of the Gap, from sources such as the United Nations, the Central Intelligence Agency, and others." Surprisingly, the main finding of Redefining the Gap was a politically sensitive criticism of Barnett's model. "If you merely define The Gap as nations that are either African or Islamic, the numbers say life in those nations is nastier, more brutish, and shorter than Barnett's broader definition." As Dan wrote in his prologue, "We are at war with Africa and Islam ... We are at war for Africa and Islam."

Redefining the Gap has already attracted interest throughout the blogosphere. "Of course, I was humbled when Dr. Barnett took interest in the project, even before completion," remarked Dan. "Yet equally humbling were comments and contributions by readers and fellow bloggers. I am delighted and honored by the response Redefining the Gap has received from the blogosphere."

On his accomplishment, Dan was philosophical. "I finished publishing Redefining the Gap the same day I visited a physically and spiritually abused cathedral, confiscated by the Communist Party decades ago. Every day during my visit to the capital of China, I am remanding what a disaster 'shrinking the Core' can be. A series of bad decisions led to the collapse of what Tom calls "Globalization I," and the worst genocides and outrages of human history. A firm knowledge of what the Gap, and the Core, really are can help prevent a repeat."

Redefining the Gap was published in 14 parts. It includes its original introduction and conclusion, as well as new prologue and results sections that are exclusive to electronic media. Redefining the Gap's literature review section covers geopolitics, early geopolitical theories, the Global South hypothesis, critical geopolitics, and Dr. Barnett's PNM Theory. The report also includes a research design as well as a section on methods and operationalizations. The series concludes with an extensive bibliography, the computer logic used in the research, and the resulting scaled data.

Redefining the Gap is part of tdaxp's SummerBlog '06, a series of series that will continue as Dan reports from the People's Republic of China. Future installments include an overview of constructivist teaching methods including an interview with noted historical and educator Mark Safranski, an exploration of variations of USAF Colonel John Boyd's "OODA" Loop, and an analysis of the popular web-log Creative Anarchy from the perspective of Creativity, Talent, and Expertise.

The tdaxp blog is available online at http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com.

Note: This is a selection from Redefining the Gap, part of tdaxp's SummerBlog '06

Nation	Brutal	Nasty	Poor	Sol.	Short	IV
OCNCG	-0.16	0.47	0.73	0.64	0.43	0.65
CG	-0.14	0.46	0.68	0.56	0.41	0.61
G77	-0.04	0.52	0.5	0.45	0.51	0.65
G2277	-0.09	0.48	0.47	0.42	0.51	0.61
AfroIslam	0.05	0.6	0.34	0.31	0.63	0.67
Nalign – 2	0.01	0.58	0.43	0.4	0.55	0.67
Nalign – 3	0.001	0.57	0.41	0.38	0.56	0.66
LDC – 2	-0.08	0.31	0.55	0.44	0.41	0.49
LDC – 3	-0.08	0.38	0.54	0.4	0.62	0.59
Worlds	-0.14	0.42	0.7	0.59	0.48	0.64

Note: This is a selection from Redefining the Gap, part of tdaxp's SummerBlog '06

Halford Mackinder said that “every century has its own geographical perspective,” and it may even be true that “every century has its own geographical stereotype” (Meinig 1956:553). Geopolitical analysis is necessarily limited to some conception of the world. This research design seeks to test a geopolitical view of the present world. It is not a test throughout time. It makes no claim to be. That makes this study no less valuable.

Note: This is a selection from Redefining the Gap, part of tdaxp's SummerBlog '06

Poverty will be measured by GDP per capita, measured by purchasing power parity (CIA 2006c). Estimates are recent, with most being from 2004 or 2005. The information is listed in US Dollars. My study will scale GDP per capita so that poorest value is 0 and the richest value is 1. For each state, it's value will be calculated by taking the difference between that state's value and the lowest state's value, divided by the difference between the highest state's value and the lowest state's value. The logic to read in and scale this data is included in the appendix, particularly in the function scaleData().

Note: This is a selection from Redefining the Gap, part of tdaxp's SummerBlog '06

Yet in spite of the potential consequences of Barnett's work, little has been done to test it. For instance, do the measures he gives for the “Gap” actually correlate with being in the Gap? Does another accepted model work better?