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ERIC Number: ED276438
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1986-Oct
Pages: 11
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
A Course in Thinking for Interdisciplinary Faculty Groups.
Lauer, Rachel M.
This article reflects one session of a course in thinking and communicating for Pace University (New York) faculty. The purpose of the course was to heighten awareness that language can seriously misrepresent events which it describes, thus affecting students' ability to perceive, evaluate, and make day-to-day decisions. Beginning with a concrete demonstration, the two worlds of language are emphasized: the nonverbal world (observation through senses) and the symbolic world (mapping or coding observations). A riddle serves to represent how poorly verbal maps fit the territories being talked about, thereby contributing to an inaccurate understanding of what is being observed and what is being said. To illustrate the important point of misperceiving directions due to language structure, a test composed of six true/false questions was given to the faculty. (The test, concepts of sentence structures, and specific examples are included.) To aid in clarification between maps and territories, it was suggested that noun-predicate structures should be modified to reveal the dynamics of who, what, where, when, and in what context. It was noted that the principle of remembering that things keep changing is important to accuracy in thinking and communicating, especially when emotionally laden or highly abstract subjects is stressed. For practice, the faculty participated in an exercise of changing subject-predicate generalizations to fit with what they realize is a changing reality; examples are included. (DJR)
Publication Type: Guides - Classroom - Teacher; Reports - Descriptive; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: Practitioners
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A