While the aphorism of education being all about the method and not the result, especially when drawing on the liberal tradition of education (Dewey, Locke, Kahneman, etc.), is commonly accepted, this paradigm isn’t reflected in the evaluative standards employed by many institutions in academia.
Perhaps I am just saying this as a jaded student who is frustrated with the memorization/detail-oriented approach to evaluation that is common is undergraduate studies of the natural sciences, but there is a certain ineloquence to this approach. While most programs profess to be completely invested in a fostering a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental elements of the various scientific disciplines, this isn’t necessarily reflected in the way in which evaluation is conducted in said programs. What I mean by this is that there are often discontinuities in the theoretical progression of ideas that result in an understanding of a physical phenomena, and these gaps are exploited when the information one is being evaluated on is detail-based or otherwise arbitrary in nature. If one had a perfectly comprehensive understanding of the topic at hand, of course they would be able to answer any relevant questions but the importance of grades often creates the impression in the student that the result of examinations is of a greater importance than building the appropriate theoretical foundations.
Given the breadth and pace of modern college courses, there must of course be some corner-cutting involved in designing the syllabus for a given course. However, this often results in a list of concepts that must be touched on, with little time reserved for discussing the relationship between these concepts. In other words, the pedagogical process is skill-based and not geared towards the development of high-order critical thinking skills within the discipline. This almost the polar opposite of the approach of the ‘softer’ sciences, such as philosophy, sociology and psychology, where the curricula is designed almost completely to develop this type of critical thought. While there is a great importance in developing a familiarity the various tools at one’s disposal in the pursuit of knowledge, the actual deductive and inductive processes involved in pursuing novel knowledge and making worthwhile contributions to the discipline itself has little relation to this type of learning. Ultimately, the goal of any legitimate scientist or person of an academic persuasion is to make these types of contributions to human understanding. So why isn’t this goal reflected in the way in which these disciplines are taught?
Of course, this is assuming a given uniformity in the way that these types of educative experiences are conducted, but there are general, transcending properties and themes in the very content of the discipline itself that doesn’t lend itself to inspiring these types of developments. This may arise due to the standard method of evaluation through the solving of word-problems where students have an opportunity to apply their understand of a given concept by performing a given series of steps to get a correct answer. What often happens in this process is that students rely more on recognition of the format or other context clues hidden within the wording of the question to get the problem-solving process rolling, rather than through a recognition of the fundamental concepts underlying the problem. Speaking for personal experience, this is the way I have seen most problem solving done through my education in the natural sciences.
This has caused quite the disjunction in my understanding of these topics, especially once I was introduced to proof-based calculus, which relies almost entirely on the skills of higher-order thinking to develop the concepts. While I do greatly adore the pedagogical approach that is engendered by the IWU math department, it really is quite the foreign way of thinking for incoming students. I do remember how perplexed I was when I was first introduced to the proofs of concepts such as continuity or approximations, as these are concepts that were understood on only a topical level in my previous calculus education. However, through this proof-based approach, I was able to develop my understanding of the foundational concepts and fully utilize these concepts throughout the rest of the classes. In this way, a framework of ideas and the connections between them was fully fleshed out, which allowed the course to progress in a natural and logical way. It sharpened my mathematical intuition, rather than just teaching me the skills needed to perform complex computations. One gains an understanding of why the formulas, theorems and proofs are the way that they are, which grants a form of active knowledge that can be used to resolve novel problems.
I propose that a similar approach can be done in the other disciplines of science. In many disciplines, especially at the introductory level, a similar progression of ideas is fostered, but as the complexity of coursework increases the emphasis on the method falls to the wayside.