According to the paper, primary agents like parents influence relative age effects through Matthew effects. Coaches influence relative age effects through Pygmalion effects and athletes influence relative age effects through Galatea effects.
Integrating these three theories(Mathew, Pygmalion, Galatea), the authors propose a model that explains RAEs through these various social agents.
Attached are two videos;
From Jean Côté explaining the paper on RAE
Short video in which Professor Anders Ericsson independently confirms Mathew effects showing example from Mozart.
Mozart’s father was a famous music teacher and had written one of the first books on violin instruction. He tested many pioneering training methods on Mozart and his sister, according to Professor Anders Ericsson. (HBR Article)
I was watching a Rugby Try and thought about the player who did the Try. The player who did the try may get the credit, but the actual effort was cumulative and the opportunity was emergent. Without the cumulative skills, the synergy of the whole team, and the contingent emergent opportunity the Try would never be possible. This made me think about the idea of Possessive Individualism which is dominant in Entrepreneurship
FIRST EVER TRY IN SUPER RUGBY GOES TO SOLOMONE FUNAKI
Possessive Individualism in Entrepreneurship
Most entrepreneurship models, particularly the prescriptive models like the lean-startup, business plan, etc. are based on the idea of the sole entrepreneur making decisions. It is also visible in the expertise framing of effectuation by Saras Saraswathy. This relates to the conception of Possessive individualism, which is the assumption that capacities, beliefs, and desires, etc. are possessions of an individual (Macpherson, 2010).
In this approach, the individual is viewed atomistically as ‘essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities; which include: intelligence; cognitive capacities such as memory; the ability to process information; and such personality characteristics as desires and wants, crucially ‘owing nothing to society for them’(MacPherson, 1962, p. 3; 2010).
Such Possessive individualism is convenient for reductionistic studies that ignore the difficulty of complexity and the context.
The problem is that the reality of entrepreneurship is far from the case. Realworld cognition, decisions, actions, expertise, etc are extended outside of the individual. Donald Trump can hire the best programmers in the world, and functionally perform far better than any single expert programmer. In the real actual world we are living in, Richard Branson who struggled with accounting doesn’t had to practice MCQ tests to become better at accounting before starting his venture. Instead, he can hire as many accountants as he wants. Thus functionally perform far better than any single expert accountant. Now think of sophisticated tools or software for the practice of accounting. Most of the tools currently available are far more intelligent than any single expert accountant.
According to Clark and Chalmers(1998), real-world cognition and decisions are extended outside of our brain. They present the idea of active externalism in which objects within the environment function as a part of the mind.
They argue that the separation between the mind, the body, and the environment is an unprincipled distinction. This suggests that entrepreneurial cognition and decisions are not simply happening inside the entrepreneur’s brain, but extended outside.
Another way to view it is the distributed nature of real-world decisions(Rapley, 2008; Schneeweiss,2012; Charles et al, 1997, 1999). In contexts like entrepreneurship, there are multiple stakeholders with diverse and conflicting beliefs, preferences, and goals. They all are part of entrepreneurial cognition and decisions.
This distributed nature of decisions in entrepreneurship is partially influenced by the distributed nature of expertise in complex social domains (Edwards, 2010).
Thus, It is not necessary that an entrepreneur must be an expert in finance, accounting, programming, law, etc. Such expertise is distributed(and or extended) across various individuals(lawyer, doctor) institutions(law enforcement, companies), artifacts(tools, software), etc.
It is not even necessary that the entrepreneur know the entrepreneurial core activities. He/She can still win in-case he/she is in the right high network place, get good people to mentor and work, get access to specialized institutions, have a rich family to support, etc.
Further, In a complex domain, decision-makers(entrepreneurs or managers) are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. These problems are labeled by Ackoff as messes (Ackoff 1978; Bennet et al, 2008).
Charles, Cathy, Amiram Gafni, and Tim Whelan. “Decision-making in the physician and patient encounter: revisiting the shared treatment decision-making model.” Social science & medicine 49, no. 5 (1999): 651-661.
Charles, Cathy, Amiram Gafni, and Tim Whelan. “Shared decision-making in the medical encounter: what does it mean?(or it takes at least two to tango).” Social science & medicine 44, no. 5 (1997): 681-692.
Edwards, Anne. Being an expert professional practitioner: The relational turn in expertise. Vol. 3. Springer science & business media, 2010
Ackoff, Russell Lincoln. “The Art of Problem Solving Accompanied by Ackoff’s Fables.” (1978)
Bennet, Alex, and David Bennet. “The decision-making process in a complex situation.” In Handbook on Decision Support Systems 1, pp. 3-20. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008
It is very interesting to watch twitter debates between various academic communities. The problem is that if you are already part of a cult, you will never get to enjoy the big picture birds eye view of the show.
When it comes to education and learning, two of the prominent communities use the science tag, often to trash constructivism and progressive models. They are Neuroscience and Cognitive science or fusion; Cognitive Neuroscience. Recently I have been watching both Cognitive Neuroscience people and Cognitive science people exposing the neuro-reductionism and the uselessness so called Neuro speak. There is a lot of valuable insights in this critic.
I have already tweeted about it and blogged about it last year. But still, here is the original link to the tweet : Neuroscience of education
1. The first tweet is by Daniel Ansari, Cognitive Neuroscientist. He made the observation that Neuroscience can’t suggest what is and what isn’t effective pedagogy. Adds that, neural data cannot directly speak to the effectiveness of the instructional approach but can be an informative correlate of the behavioural outcomes (e.g intervention specific gains in reading)
2. The second one is by Daniel Willingham and David Daniel. They talks about this issue in their YouTube vlog; discusses the application of neuroscience in education
3. Third one is an article/ blogpost: In this, Mirjam Neelen & Paul A. Kirschner observes that “In general, brain imaging techniques in and of themselves don’t have any real practical implications. At best, for learning, it can be used in combination with behavioural research to try to understand processes underlying learning” Link to blog post: “STOP ABUSING NEUROSCIENCE FOR LEARNING!”
4. The recent one(order in which I found) is from “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin Press Science S.)” by Steven Pinker. He observed: “Neural plasticity is just another name for learning and development, described at a different level of analysis. All this should be obvious, but nowadays any banality about learning can be dressed up in neurospeak and treated like a great revelation of science.“
What about Cognitive reductionism
All of these observations are agreeable. Absolutely significant. But a persistent question in my mind is about the reductionism of cognitive science and the blindness of people who are committed to the cult. And can we call it a science when most of complexity and interactive dynamics are ignored. Isn’t it based on streetlight effect, that occurs when people only search for something where it is easiest to look.
What is the validity of’—for example, standardized tests, when it is absolutely clear that the tests are not measuring any skills of life success, but the socially constructed metric. An example of Pisa: Paper
Isn’t educational cognitive science mostly about social construction than about real science? I argue that most of the cognitive science driven assessments and assumptions are in a way shaping the society, constructing its values, engineering the social systems to make it easier for some people to climb the ladder, and difficult for others .
To Conclude
I like cognitive science and Neuroscience. I acknowledge the value of the tools and insights generated from neuroscience and cognitive science. I am huge fan of genuine works like that from expertise researchers and people like Herbert Simon(with his bounded rationality) who transformed the way I think. But borrowing from Dave Snowden, I am also a believer of bounded applicability of ideas, tools, theories, methods, etc. I have a tendency to question the one size fits all. E.g. , I believe Cognitive load theory is useful and good, but I also think it shouldn’t be used to dictate or sanction the validity of Direct( rote) instruction perspective. Or worst it shouldn’t be used to trash all other methods because all of them doesn’t fit a certain criteria( computer analogy).
Thus, I must say, I am hugely skeptical of many dimensions of educational cognitive science, particularly those works that has a tendency to influence policy and that part which is directly connected to money making industry, testing, assessments, etc.
According to the paper, primary agents like parents influence relative age effects through Matthew effects. Coaches influence relative age effects through Pygmalion effects and athletes influence relative age effects through Galatea effects.
Integrating these three theories(Mathew, Pygmalion, Galatea), the authors propose a model that explains RAEs through these various social agents.
Attached are two videos;
From Jean Côté explaining the paper on RAE
Short video in which Professor Anders Ericsson independently confirms Mathew effects showing example from Mozart.
Mozart’s father was a famous music teacher and had written one of the first books on violin instruction. He tested many pioneering training methods on Mozart and his sister, according to Professor Anders Ericsson. (HBR Article)
Julie’s work explores how Graduate Admissions really works in the United States
I have been following Julie Posselt for some time, particularly because of her observational studies and insights into US higher education.
Along with recent books like “The Tyranny of Merit” by Michael Sandel and “The Meritocracy Trap” by Daniel Markovits, her book “Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping”, throws a lot of light into socio-economic implications of existing perceptions about merit and equity in the US Higher ed.
Her work specifically digs into the nature of grad school admissions in elite US institutions?. Tries to find for whom(which social group) does the system work + Varying perception of merit, Legacy admissions, Homophily, Faculty gatekeeping, etc?
Based on firsthand observations of admission committees and interviews with faculty in top 10 doctoral programs in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, she shows admissions from decision makers’ point of view, including interesting episodes of committees debating the process, interviewing applicants, and grappling with borderline cases.
To her, more equitable outcomes occur when admission committees are themselves diverse and when members take a fresh look at inherited meritocratic assumptions that affect their judgment.
A few of her interesting papers are the following.
Following are a few interesting videos of her discussing the topic
1)What Phd aspirants need to know
2) Same Idea, different presentation.
3) In the following video Julie Posselt discusses her new(another) book “Equity in Science”
Nice debate here with @JuliePosselt with a great Quote from Gibor Basri of UC Berkley about the language in academic ads…(CHECK TIME >>17:30)https://t.co/WL7CyvaJ3N
Quote “A meritocracy, however, implies a system of competition in which students are moved ahead and given further opportunities on the basis of their achievement, with position in later life increasingly and irreversibly determined by earlier school records. Not only later educational opportunities but subsequent job opportunities become increasingly fixed by earlier school performance. The late bloomer, the early rebel, the child from an educationally indifferent home all of them, in a full-scale meritocracy, become victims of an often senseless irreversibility of decision.”
Completed reading Jerome Bruners "Process of education" 1/4 Quote on Meritocracy from the book.( I can heavily relate to this ⬇️ ) pic.twitter.com/yhA9UCx7KY
I think contribution from social science is mostly incremental. Cross pollination of methods from pure sciences formed the foundation for many methodological development. Here is a thread.
2# Evolutionary perspective of socio-cultural evolution. Though its early proponents like Spencer made racist remarks, the latest variants like study of cumulative cultures, cultural evolution, etc by using methods inspired by biology really seems to have enormous potential.
3# Inspired by pure science physics Saint Simon and Auguste Comte( father of sociology) used the term "social physics” as an analogy for their understanding of study of society. I think that was one of the first attempt to make real objective science out of Society.
4a# It atunes our attention to the forgotten, the other half, devils advocate. We can see this theory influencing the creation of many many different variants..
