What is an Epistomology?
Epistomology refers to the theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge It addresses the questions:
What is knowledge?
How is knowledge acquired?
How do we know what we know?
(Cited Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 3, 1967, Macmillan, Inc.)
Epistomology is essentially the process of how we learn. How does a student get from point A to B and through what means did they achieve the said objectives they were after
Briefly describe the differences between Constructivist and Positivist
The article we were instructed to read with the chapter, Rethinking what we Know states Positivist beautifully by “For a positivist, then, knowledge constitutes factual and verifiable information”. This can translate easily into the things we have grown up doing through our education of reading a book filled with facts and then being tested on said facts. We are taught what is factual through scientific results and passed the information via a factual textual (or any other method) presentation.
Constructivist is knowledge through the experience of the facts. Again the article we read states this as “Knowledge comes into being only when a human being examines data and assigns meaning to it. Examples of this would be the teaching of something that is factual, and then in the flight lessons learning by means of experience. Thousands of possibilities are available for this example. We only truly tie things together after we have experienced them.
Which Epistomolgy do you identify with and why?
I believe that we need to have both to achieve a full well rounded experience of knowledge. A positivist environment must be in place first to have a well constructivist outcome though. How do would we understand the knowledge without first understanding the facts that we are trying to put together.
In instructing everything on the ground is all about being in the air. But how does one really all tie it together without actually experiencing it? A student could write down and chair fly the appropriate simulation of an engine fire during start tell he is blue in the face. But when its experienced for the first time (hopefully never), he can walk away from that experience having more knowledge than any book or instructor could ever teach him
2 comments:
Good recap of epistemology as well as the positivst and contructivist views. You mention that both theories are useful. I would venture to guess that proponents of either side would not agree. However in aviation education there are facts like this is an airplane
______ | ______
___\__(*)__/___
and things such as decision making and ADM that never have clear cut answers.
Did you have any insights on the modalities?
You brought up some very good points in your response.
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