Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

“Yes step back and scrutinize your own mind. But with what?” -Gould

Certainty is both a blessing and a danger. -Stephen Jay Gould

I’m starting to understand that when many say, “learning styles,” they really mean “vary your teaching methods.” So, I’m starting to talk with the “learning styles” folks to decide which rant (if any) is appropriate.

Competence is multi- dimensional. Can you do it? Are you aware you can do it? Are you willing to do it? Can you judge if you can do it in a specific instance? What is your affect when doing it? How do you react when you fail to do it? #leadership #teaching

The best thing about reading Stephen Jay Gould is the way he points out how wrong we’ve been all along.

“Familiarity does not guarantee competence.” Yeah, pretty much describes many (but not all) digital natives... esp. those who experienced certain types of instruction. #edtech #education #DigitalLearning

“Learned helplessness as a result of little agency during #education.” Yeah, that just might be a thing.

If you have only learned the problem solving strategies that were taught, and you never had to find the strategy on your own, you won’t be much of a problem solver.

Paraphrasing Gould: Bias isn’t the existence of preferences, it is the unwillingness to abandon them.

“I don’t know,” is a great starting place.

Why are we surprised a generation of students taught in standards-based schools find it difficult to be independently interested?

How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service. - Darwin

Reading Gould, I think, “wow, I need to read that paragraph again.” After the third reread, I discover the paragraph is a single sentence comprising more than 100 words. I’m impressed with myself for actually understanding it... eventually.

Your claims lead to reasonable predictions. If you don’t observe what was predicted, you were likely wrong.

“We covered that before...” is a signal one does not understand how brains work or how teaching must done if they are to learn. #education #teaching

“How sad that we live in a culture almost dedicated to wiping out the leisure of ambiguity and the creative joy of redundancy.” - Stephen Jay Gould

A blog post for students in my database design and management course:
https://hackscience.education/2025/06/11/database-schema/
[https://hackscience.education/2025/06/11/database-schema/]

Much that is intuitively obvious is also wrong.

I’ve been reading some of the agile projects management literature recently. Educators might want to take a look to see if they are going to survive the future of their institutions.

If your answer is simple, you do not understand the problem.