UE1: Scientists make stuff up, and so can we

Episode title: UE1 120627 1142 T4&ET scientists make stuff up

(Loose) transcript: [00:00:00.00] Lane: And so, and I just wanna be a little bit, I want to sort of push on us to be a little more specific.  It seems like potential energy can mean a lot of things, even in this scenario.  It seems like potential energy or stored energy could mean a lot of things.  Can we come up with a more specific way of describing the stored energy in the rubber band?

[00:00:20.07] Several teachers: Elastic.
Lane: Yeah. So elastic would be, would I think we've got elastic up on our.
Lezlie: It's over here.
Lane: Oh yeah. 
(People saying that they don't have elastic on the list.)

[00:00:33.11] Lezlie: We have spring energy.
Lane: But you know, we can play (?), we can be quick with feature talk, right?  I mean, if we feel like stretching a rubber band, um, the energy that's stored in a rubber band when it's stretched seems like elastic, captures elastic energy captures that idea, and we're all comfortable with that, then we just.  That's a new feature.
Mike: So I'm not comfortable.

[00:01:04.20] Lane: You're not comfortable.  Yeah (inaudible).
Mike: I'm uncomfortable because when I'm, I'm opening my brain learning stuff, and I don't want to learn the wrong words.
Lane: Right.  Ahhh.
Mike: I don't wanna (inaudible).  So I wanna...
Teacher in background: Amen!

[00:01:16.01] Mike:...I wanna know the proper terms so that when I convey it to my students, I'm not conveying something that's people talk rather than something that's feature talk.  I want feature talk buried in my brain so that...
Lane: Yeah, yeah.
Someone in background: Content before words (?).

[00:01:31.04] Mike:...that makes me nervous that I'm going to start calling it elastic energy rather than stored mechanical energy.
Lane: Right.
Mike: So that, that's (inaudible).

[00:01:43.13] Another teacher in background: That's what scientists do, don't they?  They just make stuff up. (Laughter) As they go.
Teacher in black sweater on camera: And I will argue teachers, too.
Another teacher in background (same as above): If it makes sense, right?

[00:02:00.11] Lane: (?)
Teacher in black sweater on camera: Well they gotta put names on stuff.
Lane: I'm hearing two different, um, I hear you, I hear you saying we can make stuff up as long as we have consensus on it.  But I also hear, you know, we, we have to be able to communicate with a wider scientific community.

[00:02:16.11] Another teacher in background (same as above, I think): There is no proper name for that other than what's agreed upon by the group.
Lane (in response to ?): Um, I don't think God named this.  Or if God did name this energy, I have no access to it.
Woman on camera in V-neck dress: It's also what we're doing now and what we know at the end of the day.  You know, I mean, so we're kind of in the middle of things, so you have to keep things in the mind, that we're in the middle.  So, you know, by the end of the day, hopefully we will...

Comments: Someone flagged this episode for me, and I clipped it because it reminded me of this post from last year.  There were two moments that I considered to be particularly significant: (1) the piece where Mike expressed his discomfort with learning the wrong terms, and (2) when the guy off camera says that scientists make stuff up. 

I showed this clip in my I-RISE Congress presentation, and others were struck by the same two pieces.  Someone commented that Mike's statement evoked an image of cutting yourself open and being afraid of letting the wrong stuff in.  Not only this, the pollutant is contagious -- it might also infect his students.  Others followed up by pointing out the multiple accountabilities that teachers have -- to students, to parents, to state standards -- and that Mike may be asserting that he's not a scientist; he's a teacher.  (This sense that teachers are accountable to and constrained by a ton of external stuff is echoed Dan Levin's dissertation, which I read on Wednesday.  He issues a call for teachers to be accountable to science first.) 

Someone else distinguished between saying that scientists make stuff up and we can make stuff up.  It wasn't clear to us whether the guy off camera that says "scientists make stuff up" was sincere or playful.  (I suspect sincere.)  Regardless, there's laughter and playfulness that follows, and we wondered whether these were signs of epistemic distancing.

Episode title: UE1 120627 1458 T4 if we're making it up ourselves

(Loose) transcript: [00:00:00.00] Lane (I think): Is the rearrangement evidence of presence or evidence of change?
Teacher on camera (white shirt): That's why I was just saying a reaction was presence, but I don't know.  I wasn't saying change, I was saying presence, it's a chemical reaction.  (Snaps fingers)  I mean with a battery, it just (snaps) does it, right?  It doesn't need to warm up, like there's tubes, you know those old (inaudible).  You know it just (snaps) there's a chemical reaction.

[00:00:29.00] Teacher off camera: I would agree with chemical reaction.  If we're voting, if we're making it up ourselves.


Comments: The events in this episode take place in the afternoon of the clip shown above.  I thought it was significant that the teacher off camera talks about making stuff up.  I'm not sure (how can I be?) whether or not this statement refers directly to the one earlier, but if it did, it would seem significant to me -- that the teacher has been empowered to 'act like a scientist' in her choosing terms that make sense to her to describe a scenario.