Blog 4: Theory in the Bar, Theory in the Car

I feel overwhelmed by the amount of educational theories that have simply been mentioned or listed at this point in the semester. I do not understand how all of this research fails to be debated, or even utilized,  in actual classrooms. Worse still, school boards are populated by elected members rather than appointed scholars or practitioners of educational philosophy.

I do feel a bit more immersed in PhD thinking, but just a bit. On the writing side, I’m approaching it as another style to add to my bucket of writing skills. Like any writing, it is writing for a specific audience. The thinking required of a PhD is more granular than what I’m accustomed to for daily life. Weirdly, perhaps, PhD thinking would be served well by late night bar conversations after a few hours in a jazz club, because that’s an atmosphere that promotes relaxation and discussion. PhD students don’t relax. That’s a problem.

I have not yet translated that granular thinking into my PhD classes. For assignments, I organize other people’s thinking into a tidy structure. I expect that level of thinking to emerge while I’m driving, or riding my mountain bike, or walking my dogs at Oak Cliff Nature Preserve, or sipping a martini at Reveler’s Hall while the house band plays Gershwin’s “Summertime.” I expect to summon that thinking on command eventually, but for me, because I know me well, it will be an organic evolution. I’ve begun rereading the paper on logical fallacies, one fallacy per day, to cement that knowledge in my brain for the next verbal bar brawl.

There has been a shift, an epiphany of sorts, in my understanding of scholarly writing. It is not meant to be good writing, is it? It eliminates the speaker’s voice so that only information remains. One flaw I’ve encountered in some of the papers I’ve read is repetition, as if the researcher responsible for a later section did not read what was covered earlier by a fellow team author. Writing needs editing. Also, writers need thick skin and faith that feedback will make their work better. It’s funny to me that AI interfaces are programmed to sound more human, while PhD students are taught to write like machines.  

As for theory, I am hoping to adapt Bloom’s mastery theory and taxonomy for future work on my dissertation, and my life’s work in content creation. At this writing, the extent of my knowledge on Benjamin Bloom is one pyramid chart and one graphic caption. It is a start.