Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-28-2008

[andrewducker]

• Believing that nurture outweighs nature makes you more likely to do well
  As before, the intervention group became more likely to subscribe to malleable beliefs as a result of the teaching, and the average maths score of that group rose, whereas the control group continued to do badly. The greatest improvement was found in the children who had started with a fixed view of their abilities and been taught to think of it as malleable: fixity is bad for performance. But above all, the sequence was clear: change the belief, you change the motivation, and that improves the grades.
  (tags: education nature nurture)
• No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in Innovative â˜Passive Housesâ™
  New homes are incredibly energy conserving. I hope they catch on.
  (tags: energy green solar design housing)

Comments

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

If I recall, there was a psych study a few years back which split a group of two identical children into two similar halves, but falsely told their teachers that one group had done better and one worse on an IQ test. By the end of the next school year the two groups had strongly and significantly different learning outcomes, based purely on the teacher's expectations. (This is one reason why academic selection at 11 is evil).

However, I really dislike the statement that "the influence of genetics is negligible" - it's just an utter non-sequitur: genetic influence (typically, very large numbers of interacting genes) on complex traits can only be demonstrated at a population level, pretty much by definition, while the author's talking about individuals and new robust evidence that good teaching can move individuals very far to the right of their own individual bell-curve of possible outcomes. (Which, yeah, I would fucking well hope so...) That doesn't mean the genome has no influence on that same bell curve - it's a false antithesis.

Anyway. Did you know Eric Landers has been appointed to a major scientific advisory position in the Obama administration? This is very cool - he's a good administrator, very good geneticist, and one of the best public speakers and communicators I know of.

[andrewducker]

I totally agree on the last bit about genetics.

And I've liked what I've seen about Obama's choices. He's getting in good advisors.

I look forward to seeing how he copes in the real world :->

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I actually live in a passive house but it is not designed to be so and therefore lacks the vital feature of a passive heat exchange. So although I never use the radiators I do have an awful lot of condensation.

They are undoubtably going to catch on.