Thoughts on knowledge, learning , rules and intuition

The education system, focusing on delivering well established knowledge, fails to prepare the pupils to successful citizenship in the fast changing reality and technology. A change in approach is called for

1.??????Knowledge and expertise???Knowledge is a data or process structure (concept) used, by itself or with other “pieces”, to infer/ create a new knowledge

??Knowledge in storage has no meaning.

·??????“Learning“ is the process of creating new knowledge package from others.

·??????“Expertise” is the ability to consistently generate pieces of knowledge that satisfy challenges/problems at hand, in an efficient way.

·??????Limitations to expertise are the stored memory (storage of knowledge pieces) and the processing power (the working memory).

·??????This limits “expertise” to certain areas of knowledge. There is no “general expert”

·??????The abundance of knowledge and its accessibility shift the objective of learning from data to process acquisition.

·??????There is a hidden assumption that process competencies (analysis, inquiry, creativity) are generic and meet the challenges facing a citizen now and in the future. Experience shows that as much of general concepts and skills are cross-cutting disciplines, expertise grows in “the prepared mind”, meaning, in the area familiar and already ”plowed” by the expert.

2.??????Rules and intuition

Newton’s laws are considered axioms in the education community. Different interpretations of observed realistic phenomena are referred to as misconceptions.?FCI – Force Concept Inventory is an assessment method for “weeding out” intuitive misconceptions.

Is there a conflict between Newton’s laws and intuition?

A young shepherd, threatened by a bully, loaded his sling with a new stone, circled the sling and released the stone, aiming at and hitting the bully right between his eyes. Remember the story of David ??well, here is a case where intuition is right. Just try to device a robot to mimic the same, considering random stone, wind etc. The robot and its programming certainly follow Newton’s rules, but how many of them are involved? and how are they intertwined in the event?

There is no conflict between Newton’s laws and intuition. They just do not meet. The laws are cognitive concept models that do not show up clean in familiar realistic events, but are constituents in a model describing reality.

Newton’s rules applied to circular motion need additional rules and parameters to describe David –Goliath scene.

The intuitive statement that motion requires applied force – is true in reality, and so are any intuitive perceptions of real experiences.

When a truck and a small car collide – the passengers in the small car suffer a harder hit than those in the truck (because they are bodies floating within their cars and are hit by their own cars during collision). Where is Newton’s third law?

The issue is, then – Newton and intuition speak on different things. Newton devised the building blocks for models of reality, while we experience reality.

Is there a conflict? No, both are needed to interpret reality and to create new real systems.

Intuition has to be nurtured. It constitutes the expert’s tool-box.

Learning means interpreting experience-gained intuition with the rules, not discarding intuition for the rules.

3.??????Learning

·??????Learning has to be active. The experience gained through engaging reality is the reference for further inference, anchoring the rules and building intuition.

·??????Rule-learning has to be within context of the life environment, to be absorbed in the whole?”concept of the world”. Concise, rigorous mathematical formulation and exercise sum up the learning process, not being its introduction.

·??????The ultimate objective of learning is competency to address complex problems – in nature and in life. These are addressed by focused inquiry. Learning has to culminate to challenges of inquiring real phenomena and creating new systems per desired useful tasks.

·??????Team-inquiry and creation multiplies the cumulative intuition and knowledge.

4.??????Creation

·??????Creation is conceiving and creating a new entity. When it is not a straight follow-up of the rules it is said to be “thinking out of the box”

·??????. Now, what is "out of the box"? it is out of another box, meaning another experience to relate to, to compare, make analogies, estimate and infer. This is what intuition is all about. Creation needs conceptual building blocks too.

5.??????Parents: ?Encourage your children, and engage with them in addressing the secrets of the surrounding nature and activity.?Develop their imagination, intuition, inquisitive and system thinking – to best prepare them to successful life.