As an educational psychologist I have been on a task force committee to draft a mission statement for our university. In my view, the paper was based on the state of the art discussion about competence oriented teaching. However, the group absolutely failed to gain the support from the science departments (physics, chemistry, mathematics) and I had the feeling that we were talking in two different languages when we discussed the issues. Now, I am wondering if I experienced a particularly challenging situation or if this is more of a common experience when different academic cultures need to interact.
Here is my question: What is your experience in dealing with the challenges involved, when ideas from the mindset (and terminology) of social scientists and natural scientists collide? Any suggestions how to bridge the communication chasm between these parallel universes?
educational psychology is a informative media of evolving science to implementation. Understanding the abstracts, theories, theorems, postulated views etc., have to transferred to the students in the right acceptable and understandable form of communication and learning.
From my point of view, you probably faced an Epistemic Beliefs issue. Physics, chemistry & mathematics are academic disciplines which are, from my experience, mainly focusing on the beautiful truth of their abstractions. Anything that drives the scientist away from that aesthetic feeling leads to some kind of cognitive dissonance, or at least to the perception of some useless discourse.
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