On Tacit Knowledge for Philosophy of Education

This article offers a detailed reading Gascoigne and Thornton’s book Tacit Knowledge (2013), which aims to account for the tacitness of tacit knowledge (TK) while preserving its status as knowledge proper. I take issue with their characterization and rejection of the existential-phenomenological Background—which they presuppose even as they dismiss—and their claim that TK can be articulated “from within”—which betrays a residual Cartesianism, the result of their elision of conceptuality and propositionality. Knowledgeable acts instantiate capacities which we might know we have and of which we can be aware, but which are not propositionally structured at their “core”. Nevertheless, propositionality is necessary to what Robert Brandom calls, in Making It Explicit (1994) and Articulating Reasons (2000), “explicitation”, which notion also presupposes a tacit dimension, which is, simply, the embodied person (the knower), without which no conception of knowledge can get any purchase. On my view, there is no knowledgeable act that can be understood as such separately from the notion of skilled corporeal performance. The account I offer cannot make sense of so-called “knowledge-based” education, as opposed to systems and styles which supposedly privilege “contentless” skills over and above “knowledge”, because on the phenomenological and inferentialist lines I endorse, neither the concepts “knowledge” nor “skill” has any purchase or meaning without the other.     

“You Have to Sit and Explain it All,and Explain Yourself.” Mothers’ Experiences of Support Services for Their Offspring with a Rare Genetic Intellectual Disability Syndrome

The experiences of mothers of adult offspring with Angelman, Cornelia de Lange, or Cri du Chat syndrome have not been previously explored in research. The current study focuses on experiences with social and medical services and the impact the rareness of an adult offspring’s syndrome has on the experiences of mothers. Eight mothers of adults with Angelman, Cornelia de Lange, or Cri du Chat syndrome were interviewed. Thematic Content Analysis was used to interpret the interviews. Four themes emerged from the analysis: (i) The rarity of their offspring’s syndrome, (ii) Uneven medical and social care service provision, (iii) The inertia of social care services, and (iv) Mothers as advocates. Mothers felt that the rareness of their offspring’s syndrome did not affect experiences with social care services, but did affect access to medical services and some aspects of day-to-day living. Accessing appropriate social care services was reported to be a lengthy and complex process. These data may help inform care service providers about how best to support adults with rare genetic syndromes and their families.     

A 2 × 2 taxonomy of multilevel latent contextual models: accuracy-bias trade-offs in full and partial error correction models

In multilevel modeling, group-level variables (L2) for assessing contextual effects are frequently generated by aggregating variables from a lower level (L1). A major problem of contextual analyses in the social sciences is that there is no error-free measurement of constructs. In the present article, 2 types of error occurring in multilevel data when estimating contextual effects are distinguished: unreliability that is due to measurement error and unreliability that is due to sampling error. The fact that studies may or may not correct for these 2 types of error can be translated into a 2 × 2 taxonomy of multilevel latent contextual models comprising 4 approaches: an uncorrected approach, partial correction approaches correcting for either measurement or sampling error (but not both), and a full correction approach that adjusts for both sources of error. It is shown mathematically and with simulated data that the uncorrected and partial correction approaches can result in substantially biased estimates of contextual effects, depending on the number of L1 individuals per group, the number of groups, the intraclass correlation, the number of indicators, and the size of the factor loadings. However, the simulation study also shows that partial correction approaches can outperform full correction approaches when the data provide only limited information in terms of the L2 construct (i.e., small number of groups, low intraclass correlation). A real-data application from educational psychology is used to illustrate the different approaches.     

The case of Pinocchio: teachers’ ability to detect deception

In a study with 365 teacher students, 447 teacher trainees, and 123 teachers, the ability to detect students’ deception was tested. Participants judged the credibility of videotaped students who were accused of academic dishonesty (having cheated in a test). Half of these messages were actually true (students had not cheated on the test) and half of them were deceptive (students had cheated on the test). As expected and in line with findings on the influence of expertise on the ability to detect deception from other fields, we found that the overall accuracy rate of teachers was not higher than that of teacher trainees and teacher students. Moreover, we found no effect of teaching experience (years working as a teacher) on overall detection of deception accuracy. Interestingly, teachers were found to have a stronger truth bias and therefore had a lower accuracy in detecting deceptive messages than teacher students and teacher trainees (veracity effect). While teacher characteristics accounted for very little variance, senders’ opportunity to prepare and their gender had strong effects. Detection accuracy was higher for messages where the student had no chance to prepare before being accused of cheating. Overall, independent, or experience, participants hold inaccurate beliefs about deception.     

Short assessment of the Big Five: robust across survey methods except telephone interviewing

We examined measurement invariance and age-related robustness of a short 15-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-S) of personality dimensions, which is well suited for applications in large-scale multidisciplinary surveys. The BFI-S was assessed in three different interviewing conditions: computer-assisted or paper-assisted face-to-face interviewing, computer-assisted telephone interviewing, and a self-administered questionnaire. Randomized probability samples from a large-scale German panel survey and a related probability telephone study were used in order to test method effects on self-report measures of personality characteristics across early, middle, and late adulthood. Exploratory structural equation modeling was used in order to test for measurement invariance of the five-factor model of personality trait domains across different assessment methods. For the short inventory, findings suggest strong robustness of self-report measures of personality dimensions among young and middle-aged adults. In old age, telephone interviewing was associated with greater distortions in reliable personality assessment. It is concluded that the greater mental workload of telephone interviewing limits the reliability of self-report personality assessment. Face-to-face surveys and self-administrated questionnaire completion are clearly better suited than phone surveys when personality traits in age-heterogeneous samples are assessed.     

The Hormonal Correlates of Implicit Motives

Implicit motives represent nonconsciously represented dispositions to seek specific classes of incentives and to avoid corresponding classes of disincentives. Growing evidence suggests that the implicit power motive is associated with basal levels and reactivity of the gonadal steroid hormones testosterone in men and estradiol in women. It is also associated with increased release of stress hormones (cortisol, norepinephrine) in response to dominance challenges and social defeat. The implicit affiliation motive is linked to the release of progesterone: increases in progesterone are followed by increases in affiliation motivation, and arousal of affiliation motivation is associated with concurrent or subsequent progesterone increases. There is limited evidence for a role of vasopressin in achievement motivation. These findings point to a key role of the hypothalamus for implicit motives, a role that is consistent with the existence of function‐specific nuclei within this brain area.