Can we just hurry up and get to the daughters in bathrooms part. zzzz....

You are a disingenuous poster, in my opinion, so I choose to engage you on my terms and not waste time playing your games. Ship up and maybe we can have an actual discussion and learning experience.

I'm OK with anyone deciding that they aren't interested in engaging with some other poster for whatever reason. But in that case: stop engaging. You don't get to choose your own terms of engagement, the terms are spelled out in the forum guidelines. That goes for everyone :P

Fine. JV, I don't know how I would define and implement that. Now can you provide actual support whenever you feel it's necessary to firmly assert thing like I mentioned?

JV is left center. Never forget!

You're basically dooming this forum if we can't call out disingenuous posting when it happens.

I'm not going sit and untangle JV's nonsense all day with one hand tied my back. It's necessary imo to call out obvious gaslighting, ignoring and refusing to engage on the primary point, deliberately confusing disparate issues, or any other of his tactics for that they are.

I don't think you understand just how easy it is to gunk up the works if that's your goal, and how much vigilance it takes to keep that stuff out.

Hey guys - the poster who likes to snarkily call out "infinite genders" multiple times doesn't like you assuming he's in the 2 genders crowd. So just cool your jets.

You snipped the part of my post where I said I thought there was value in people getting honest feedback about the quality of their posting, provided that it doesn't degenerate into a quagmire of personal attacks.

The problem is that it's always going to be a question of finding some happy balance, and we're never all going to agree on what that means. In practice, that means you mostly just have to put up with my instincts :P But that's why the ultimate individual recourse is just disengagement. Like if you think someone's contributions are beyond the pale you have two options. The first is to report the posts. If that does not give you satisfaction, the second option is simply to disengage. If it gets to the point where literally no one wants to engage with some posters then I'll take that into consideration.

But, to be clear, it's never a problem to tell someone that you think they've ignored or refused to engage a point. I do that all the time. Nor is it a problem to argue that someone's point seems disingenuous. I also do that. In fact I pretty strongly criticized some posts in this thread, and have allowed other strong criticisms as well. The very subjective point at which I'm trying to draw the line is just when it's no longer constructive.

This post is a case study in transphobic tropes. There is the weaponizing of mental health challenges in the trans community, paired with that lovely quip about suicide to boot. There is the implicit assumption about "nothing weird" in HS means acting cis-gendered, ignoring entirely that HS can be a deeply traumatizing time period for trans or transitioning or even just questioning kids forced to try and not appear "weird". There is the classic transphobic conflation of being trans and wearing women's underwear. And finally the outright denial about trans identity. Quite a package we have here.

I think this is a mistake. I respect what you are trying to do. A discussion about mental health challenges in the trans community might well be a very important discussion to have coming from a place of empathy and compassion as you would undoubtably like. And certainly throwing these claims around evidence free is bad as you say. But it is precisely because they are coupled in the way I've described above that makes this so problematic, and to simply focus on "show us your evidence" is insufficient in my mind.

I didn't really intend that to be a call for evidence. I kind of think this is as much about conceptualization as evidence, particularly because of the negative connotation of "mental illness".

What I mean is roughly this: I think there is certainly plenty of evidence that gender dysphoria, or transgender identification, is traumatic. Hence the measured rates of suicide/depression. Undoubtedly it's also the case that part of what makes it so traumatic is the lack of social acceptability.

Here I think the sociology of gender can explain something about how identity is not merely individual but social, and gender identities are very important social identities -- gender distinctions are just so enormously fundamental in basically all cultures. Social legitimacy shapes what options are perceived as legitimate by an individual in forming an individual identity. It is very difficult to construct a sense of identity if one feels so disconnected from any legitimate social identity.

But, if we accept the conjecture that suzzer mentioned which connects being transgender to some biological intersex basis (which I think is reasonable enough), it also highlights the fact that the social nature of gender does depend upon some physical facts. It's probably inevitable -- given the roughly dichotomous nature of sex characteristics in humans -- that cultures will predominantly form gender categories around the near-dichotomy, and that's basically what humans do, with the exception that several cultures have developed non-binary categories (but that does not seem to eliminate the stresses of being non-binary in those cultures).

So, it seems to me that it's a very hard problem to completely ameliorate the stress of being transgender purely through cultural change, although I do think that more acceptance of transgender identities, and more understanding, probably helps significantly. But when ~95% of people are cisgender and gender differences are almost inevitably deeply important in pretty much all cultures, I'm not sure to what extent we should expect to completely eliminate the stress which leads to the kind of data Juan mentioned.

Does that make something a mental illness? No, I don't think so. Particularly because "illness" implies something that ought to be remedied, some aberration to be corrected. But I don't think that's a reasonable way to think about it, any more than it's reasonable to try to "cure" gay people. It's simply natural that some percentage of people will be transgender, and given some pretty basic facts about human social organization that's likely to be stressful. We should be empathetic to them, and remember that they are human beings. There are important cultural/political conversations about how institutions can make this a little easier.

We should also stigmatize actual mental illness less than we do, too, of course, but in any case I think the above illustrates what I mean when I say I think the questions are more conceptual than being about evidence, per se.

Hey, did you ever find an example of a textbook that claims there are "infinite genders"?

The kinds of positions I describe are in both countries I've been a professor in, Canada and the US. Sure, if your only experience of non-research faculty is old people with masters who are grandfathered into positions they couldn't get hired at today, then sure you might well believe that "research" faculty are more innovative. While I don't really enjoy either the "lower level vs better" or "research vs nonresearch" framings of this conversation, my lived experience is really quite opposite, that there is a large community of highly dedicated teaching focused faculty who are highly dedicated to their craft, trying innovative techniques, treating pedagogy as a genuine scholarly pursuit, attending teaching focused conferences, publishing SoTL research, organizing teaching focused seminar series, up to date on the literature, etc etc etc. My experience and indeed frustration in the departments I've been in has been that it is extremely hard to get mathematics research faculty to even show up to a free lunch if the subject is teaching, won't join in when trying a new experiment on something like metacognition or whatever, and insist on using traditional lecture all the time in every context.

Perhaps the best engages the students in an inquiry based session to explore, develop, and contrast the different perspectives on IVT. But that is sort of my point: while this kind of content question can be important at times, the design of an effective learning environment is in my mind quite a bit larger. I don't really like this "lower level" vs "better teacher" framing, or even the entire framing of research vs nonresearch faculty and who is "better" as an aggregate, but we sort of got stuck here.

Maybe I'm a low level teacher, but can you expand on your "entirely different way" that you teach improper integrals?

We've entirely reformed our major PreCalc -Calc II, applied calc, and quantitative reasoning sequences to embrace active learning, flipped classrooms, etc, with all aspects been extensively studied. While papers are still a year or so away (and happy to share at that time) it has been a pretty much resounding success at increasing student performance and behavioural outcomes, and to a lesser degree attitudes, with n about to hit 5000. At least in my experience it has been pretty successful, but of course you have to have the right "innovation".



While your earlier remarks can be forgiven since you appear to have little to no experience with stable teaching oriented faculty positions that I am familiar with - and that explains why you seem to think they won't work as hard etc - you are still doubling down on a sort of belief they must be inherently worse if they are not actively doing mathematics research. It's nonsense. I'm not saying there isn't any spillover benefits, but time is sadly zero sum and there is so many tangible benefits to someone who is really focusing on effective pedagogy and developing as an educator. Personally, for my position I could continue to do some mathematics research and would be rewarded for that promotion wise, but thankfully I'm in a position where that isn't necessary and so I have shifted to education research which will ALSO be rewarded and I believe this work has been vastly more beneficial to my teaching than trying to get one or two minor papers out a year in my past research field.

How bout the opposite of "innovation"?

http://calculusmadeeasy.org/

I think uke-master is misunderstanding some of my comments. One should qualify things by remarking that it is mainly in North America and maybe some limited other places like Scandinavia that there exist teaching only faculty; in most countries faculty are supposed to be both researchers and teachers, although in many institutions there is traditionally not much research activity.

My sense is that the typical mathematicas professor engaged in research is also highly engaged in teaching and doesn't perceive these activities as antagonistic or divorced. She may complain about the time she has to dedicate to teaching, but (in general!) she works hard to do it well and does it well. And she was certain advantages for doing it. More perspective and knowledge facilitates better contextualization, better selection of material, better focusing of instruction. The experience of rethinking things from the bottom, a common part of all well done research, is directly applicable to teaching. The researcher normally isn't content with simply parroting what some textbook says, reworks the material herself from the beginning, thinks hard about how to present it to someone who doesn't know it (having herself just gone through the process of relearning it), etc. Some non researchers do this also, and those are the good teachers, the ones constantly reeducating themselves, explaining to themselves.

Some institutions put in place incentive structures that favor or disfavor trying new things in the classroom. My own experience is that those active in all aspects of university life are more likely to be active in any given aspect; in particular most of the successful "innovation" initiatives that I have seen, be they redesign of curricula, changes in teaching practices, whatever, have involved integrally, often wholly, faculty active in research, acting out of conviction of the necessity of such changes rather than motivated primarily by institutional incentivization.

Judging the success of "innovation" is difficult. Most experienced math teachers with experience in a diversity of manners of teaching mathematics, lectures, group work, flipped classrooms, MOOCs, etc. will agree that the most effective method for teaching anything of any depth at the university level (where efficacy is judged by student comprehension, as judged subjectively by an expert) is the old-fashioned blackboard (or its modern electronic counterparts). (Maybe they are all wrong, but it is what most will say.) Judging learning success by pass-fail rates is problematic. I can move the pass-fail rate in a calculus class from 10% to 90% simply by setting a different exam or by indicating more or less clearly what will be on the exam. Interactive learning environments (flipped classroom, etc.) tend to cover less material; this makes them in some senses "easier". It also is inadequate in some contexts, e.g. teaching engineers. An electrical engineering student needs to get to the Laplace transform, convolutions, etc., and has to learn to learn a lot of things on his own, outside the classroom. It matters to move quickly, and to really learn things. Most so-called active learning environments are really far more passive (for the student) than is the traditional blackboard lecture; in the moment the lecture is receptive, passive, but after the fact the student has to work a lot to keep up, assimilate, understand, and this requires the development of the autonomy, independence, and curiosity which are important later; the active learning environments result in far more direct stimulus by the professor, much more activity in the moment, and much less later; they fit well with the notion that the goal is to get the answer - my sense is that they are more useful to the teacher, providing direct feedback about what students do and do not understand - than they are for students. In any case both approaches are useful, and complementary - this explains the traditional way of teaching calculus with several hours of lecture, to get all the material out there, and several hours of problem sessions, to give direct feedback and stimulus to beginning students who don't yet have the autonomy and independence to survive on their own.

I do think that who knows less is inherently less likely to be a good teacher than who knows more, that who has done something creative is more likely to be a good teacher than someone who has not. This is true in any sphere of activity. It is not just that knowing more or having done something creative is an advantage when teaching (both obviously are), it is that who has learned more or done something creative is more likely to be hard working, thoughtful, dedicated, imaginative etc., because learning more and doing something creative requires those skills. Think of music teachers. Or plumbing.

The self-educating teacher is not so likely to reduce teaching integrals to some classification of improper integrals used only in first-year calculus classes and artificially distinguishing various kinds of asymptotic behavior and is far more likely to focus on essential, illustrative examples, while explaining explicitly why one might care about convergence of apparently infinite integrals.

But don't misunderstand me. When I say "doing research" I'm not talking about Fields medalists and tenured faculty at Princeton. I'm talking about people engaged in doing something, however mediocre it might appear from Princeton (so this includes faculty at Michigan).

I've got nothing but respect for those that teach seriously and take seriously teaching, whatever their backgrounds. It's not a question of doctorates and credentials, but it matters to be engaged with the material at a level much higher/deeper than what one teaches.

A lot of research mathematicians with background in probability could write a book or teach a class about how to play poker, and most would get things wrong because they aren't primarily poker players or aren't succesful poker players. The same goes for teaching arithmetic to children.

This reminds me of the tradition of elementary textbooks written by superlative mathematicians. There are examples by Felix Klein, Gelfand, Vladimir Arnold, etc. of textbooks aimed at children (and teachers of children at the same time) and they share the common element of explaining without dwelling explicitly on technical details, while expecting a lot of effort from the reader.

Right. As I said in my last post, it seems you and I have very different lived experiences. Your archetypical example was an old guy with a masters teaching calc for 30 years and complaining they were not innovative. You don't seem to have much if any experience with the kind of teaching positions I'm familiar with at north american institutions. Hence your trumpian "and some, I assume, are good people". My experience is the opposite, with a robust community of highly engaged teaching faculty who - of course - are likewise thinking hard about how to present content and not just parroting the textbook, but they go far further than this! And this is contrasted with a deluge of research only professor who do not give two ****s about teaching, and don't or won't engage in any professional activity besides showing up and giving their lectures. I'll give just one example, a good friend of mine is a research focused assistant professor who despite seemingly being interested decided not to join in on a particular intervention that would have taken two hours of time per semester because his tenured mentors had told him his priority in the first five years was to publish 10 papers to get tenure, and thus to minimize teaching as much as possible.

That's ok. Our lived experiences differ. So let's not bother with the "research vs teaching" framing, which I've never liked, and mainly focus on the types of things that can make an effective teacher.




I'm sorry your colleagues would say this. Mine wouldn't. Well, they likely would and should crap on MOOCs (I do work a bit in the online space, and generally believe with enormous effort on interactive materials, effective course design, and a passionate instructor it is possible to approach parity, but it is extremely hard and we should generally stay away from that). My experience on the STEM education conference circuit in north america is overwhelmingly the other way, particularly in the post-freeman era, and after the collective call to action from the heads of most of the major american math organizations (http://www.cbmsweb.org/Statements/Ac..._Statement.pdf). While I agree that change is slow, both perceptions and actions, but the momentum is definitely moving away from the traditional lecture as the sort of be all and end all.

Sure. In our research design, half of the classrooms are flipped and half traditional lecture. There is common coordination with the same homework, tests, test prep resources, learning objectives, etc for all sections. This is calibrated by all students taking a pre and post concept inventory to aid both the statistics for the initial distribution of talent (ie can adjust if say flipped gets "lucky" by having more strong students) and to see if normalized gains are different. Content coverage is identical. Indeed, my experience is that flipped classrooms could cover MORE content because you are transitioning much of the lower level foundational knowledge that doesn't need high levels of support outside of the classroom, carving out time for slightly slower paced but extremely high value collaboration about more challenging aspects.


Well I mainly teach engineers in the lower level classes at least, and it seems great for them. You seem to have several confusions, firstly the time I covered above, but also a flipped classroom is predicated on requiring students to learn things on their own. It is mainly a shift in social supports, taking the role of the "middle" learning (with preclass and post class activities assigned) instead of the "beginning" of learning (only post class activities assigned). The goal, for me, is precisely to allow students to "really learn things".

Bizarre. A pedagogy specifically aiming to bend the curve on the ratio of students behaving passively vs actively - it's in the name! - is not even equal, not even a bit more, but in your mind "far more passive"? I taught traditional lecture for a long time. I did a lot of tricks to try and get students to be actively engaged in mathematical reasoning both in my classroom and as you suggest more importantly outside of the classroom. Some did that great, some not so great. The main reason why I started experimenting with active learning and eventually fully flipping is because I was able to increase the collective amount of both time and quality of which students were engaging in the mathematical process. Part of why I think success has gone up is that some first year engineering students have the metacognitive skills to make highly effective use of their at home time, but many do not so by explicitly structuring an environment to embrace these in the class it not only levels that playing field but also teaches students about effective learning itself.

This is the complete opposite of the goal. "The answer" is extremely deemphasized in my classrooms, the entire point is about engaging, collaborating, and communicating with mathematical reasoning. You don't just watch the teacher perform some steps and get the answer which you dutifully write in your notes. You are challenged to think deeply about the concepts, to integrate knowledge, to come up with creative solutions, to explain your thought process, etc etc. The whole point is that the social supports of collaborating in a structured environment can allow this to be effective.

And the teacher being highly informed about what students do and do not understand is extremely useful for the students! This lets me tailor my teaching do the specific needs of my students, which allows a lot of the whole class discussions to be flexible and effective; only sometimes do they match my preclass intentions of what will be required.

Sure. As I say, flipped classrooms are more about time shifting to increase social supports than anything. I still do "foundational knowledge transfer" in at least first year courses (higher level have the strength for more inquiry based approached), I just do it preclass in interactive video modules, which buys the time for a higher portion of engagement in higher level learning objectives in a time with social and structural supports.

I don't deny marginal gains. All else being equal, you take the stronger mathematician, and that will likely have a marginal gain. But there are many, many things that help you be a more effective teacher, and many of those with direct and obvious possibilities of increasing your abilities. If time wasn't zero sum, then great everyone should spend 20 hours a week doing research and hope there is some spillover benefits in how they think about improper integrals. But that will cut out a lot of other things you can do to try and improve your teaching. So when you set this up as a "teaching vs research" and then ONLY focus on this one thing that is helpful, you are missing most of the picture of what makes an effective teacher.





As I say, I think "mathematical strength" IS a component, and certainly all hires I've done have required PhDs and when I used to work at one of the most prestigious canadian institutions we also preferred candidates that had a post doc as well. But as explained for these north american institutions, the expectation is not to (necessarily at least) continue that afterwards, because the focus of your scholarly activities is indeed teaching and so you should primarily go to teaching conferences not research conference, write SoTL papers not mathematical research papers, invite teaching speakers not research speakers, and so on. Time for both? Great, do it. If you are teaching first year calculus for engineers, a PhD a decentish PhD IS - at least in my books - sufficiently "higher level" than the content being taught, and while you could go higher level than that and hope for marginal gains, there are many ways to accomplish gains in the effectiveness of your teaching.

It's not a question of doctorates and credentials

I agee, a good score on the practice LSAT is sufficient, imho.

The Problem with the SAT's Idea of Objectivity

An interesting article on new attempts by College Board to factor socio-economic status into test scores as an admission criteria

Beyond thinking about college admissions and all of that, I think the author does a really good job of explaining the ways in which quantitative data can fail to be perfectly objective in the way we want them to be, which is probably what I like the most about this article:

Similar to the above, my institution does something interesting. Local area high school have always been ranked, so that you can "bias" schools that typically give good grades to hose that typically give bad grades. However, high school grades are only one indicator, SAT/ACT are the other big ones.

What has been added is that if you are in the top 10% of a local area school's high school grades, despite not getting the SAT/ACT scores to get in, you will be accepted regardless. The idea is that some schools are just terrible at preparing their students for SAT/ACT and so you can have bright students at bad schools and those should be able to get in. Isn't that crazy? Top 10% and previously couldn't get the SAT score to go to college? These students are also receiving additional supports like summer bridge programs to help transition.

Well I intend to discriminate based on race, sex etc. always in a way to address under-representation. But the intention is to reduce racism/sexism so I think most wouldn't call it racism/sexism - I don't really care about the labeling apart from the silliness of the whole business of name calling.

I'm not avoiding it - I agree with you. It's difficult, messy, vague, awkward and unsatisfactory.

Is that an objection to doing it when doing it will also greatly reduce under representation of minorities, women, etc?

How do you find this? Some schools (a lot of private ones) have a policy of xxx recommendations max and students self sorted.

I'm not 100% sure (I'm the weird canadian expat) the details of how they get the info. The naive sense I have is that *somehow* they get enough data about local area high schools to do this ranking thing for ages to adjust HS scores (maybe it is just the last 5 years, say, of data from applicants from that HS?). But I don't think your worry is going to be the problem, this is going to help students at the bottom SAT wise from ****ty schools, not fancy private schools restricting to some level of recommendations. Regardless, if you are in the top 10% of your HS, you'd presumably get the recommendation. The issue is before you could be blocked because your HS was bad at getting SAT/ACT scores.

Is the astronomical suicide rate and attempts in the trans community a myth? Do you have some alternative data? Is it unreasonable to call rates that surpass any other "marginalized" group (that I'm aware of) count as a symptom? If a reasonable person would consider this an alarm bell and things like depression, anxiety disorders, and suicide are what people use to assess mental illness, is it "weaponizing" mental illness to point out the symptoms? People come back from war with PTSD, which is mental illness. Anorexic and many body builders have body dysmorphia wich is considered a mental disorder. These things aren't simple but talking about it becomes impossible if you are going to spazz out at people for using appropriate language. Nobody is "weaponizing" language against vets, body builders, or people starving themselves either

Also it should be clear that when I say "gender fluid" I'm distinctly talking about people that don't just identify as people of the opposite sex. I'm talking about people who's gender changes by the day, week, month, or minute. It doesn't change between male and female, but all sorts of other genders that can't be limited. I don't believe homosexuals are mentally ill. I'm open to the possibility that people that identify as the opposite sex aren't mentally ill (but not convinced either way). What I do believe is that "gender fluid" people are mentally ill. That might not be right and my opinion could change with more info, but that's where I stand now.

Your uncharitable mind-reads about my personal experience knowing someone from highschool that eventually became someone living trans is both silly and wrong. I was painting a picture that they were someone that mostly fit in and there was no need to act out. I specifically mentioned that I hadn't talked to them about it so I don't know what they were thinking in highschool. I was actually indicating a "born this way" situation was possible.

Also the only person I know on facebook that posts pictures of themselves in a bra and panties is this person. It's just a fact. Maybe the men and women you went to highschool with post a lot of pictures of themselves in underwear but that's out of the ordinary in my world. I guess I would be less of an awful person if I pretended that isn't real and omitted the truth

It seems like you have come to an ideological conclusion so anyone who doesn't agree with you gets your gymnastics routine to paint them as bad. Viewing astronomical suicide rates as "weaponizing" mental illness is about as transparent as it gets

As my post acknowledged, I'm well aware of mental health and suicide challenges in the trans community. I don't typically make disgusting quips about suicide like "If you're trying to kill yourself at a higher rate than slaves or prisoners, there's definitely something to look in to", but I am aware the suicide rate is higher. It is possible to talk about that from a place of compassion to affect social change that improves the quality of life for the trans community. However, these challenges can also be used - disgustingly - to denigrate trans people. Let's see what you choose:

This is terrible in many ways. Firstly, notice that your "evidence" of mental illness is a higher proportion of trans people having other mental illnesses such as depression, suicide attempts, etc. I.e. some have mental illnesses and some do not. Much like gay cis people. Or straight cis people. But then your conclusion is gender fluid people definitely ARE mentally ill, trans people you aren't sure about, and gay people are not. You are using valid evidence (not that you actually provide any) to mental health problems in the community to be able to label the members of the community AT LARGE as mentally ill. If you commit suicide, yes you had a mental illness. And yes, trans people are more likely than cis people to try and commit suicide. But that doesn't mean "trans people are mentally ill", as a collective statement is just doesn't make any sense. And you aren't even consistent, homosexuals also commit suicide higher than heterosexuals (and less than trans) yet you don't think homosexuals are "mentally ill".This is what I mean by the standard trope of "weaponizing" mental health in the community. The mere existence of mental health is being held up as an attack on the entire community.

Next up we have your tragic if common story about a HS acquaintance. When you had no idea they were trans, you wax on about how they mostly fit in and appeared normal to you and your cis-gendered friends. However, the pressure to "fit in" and "appear normal" (meaning act straight and cis-gendered), the fear that they would be mocked for presenting their truth, the fear that their very identify will be denied, these are all factors that lead to mental health challenges. I can say from experience my 90s era HS was not a friendly place to be gay, indeed everything bad was even called gay.

And for your HS acquaintance when they did come out, you've mocked them for their postings in social media. I'm sure a perfect pea like yourself who can't stand instagram models would never do this, but perhaps others at highschool, let's say, let it be known that if they DID wear women's clothing they would also be mocked as you have done years later. Perhaps that pressure led them to dress up as your version of "normal". Perhaps that led to a suicide attempt you don't know about.

You don't get many Well Named Good Faith Points TM on your conflations about mental health when the way you frame the story about this HS thread is in a way that across the country contributes to mental health challenges every day.

What's so disgusting about this, is that that the societal rejection of trans people is a contributing factor to mental health challenges in the community, much as it was and to a lessening degree is with gay people. Again, we have to knock off a few more Good Faith Points TM.

As a random historical note , in ww1 what we call PTSD was called shell shock. And some soliders were tried and executed for it.

Great post. Sadly wasted on JV, but hopefully some others get something from it. I did, thanks.