Tracy Dix 00:00
Hello and welcome to the Wyrd Learning podcast with your host, Dr Tracy Dix and Dr Alex Patel. Today's episode, we'll be discussing the problem of criticality and what it means for university students. This show is produced by Patricia Marie Solis and her wonderful team at MVA and CO. So Alex, the problem of criticality, what is the main issue when it comes to university students and understanding what the expectations are when they begin their degrees? So the way I see it is it's something that's really difficult to understand, because if you look up things like dictionary definitions of what criticality means none of these actually make sense, neither do they relate in any way to actual academic assignments. So for example, you see here on the slides, what you know with criticality, it refers to a critical quality, state or nature. I can just feel someone saying something like, Oh, gee, thanks. You're telling me that criticality is critical, but what does it mean to be critical? And then the Cambridge dictionary says is the fact of being extremely important, or the state, or the Collins dictionary, the state of being critical again? So a little bit vague. I feel, for someone who's at University for the first time and feeling quite lost with what all of these things mean. Yeah. So
Alexandra Patel 01:23
as a student, none of that is helping me at all. No.
Tracy Dix 01:28
So the closest definition I found is by the Oxford English Dictionary. So let's have a quick look at that one so critical or judgmental nature or critical thought. However, I feel like this, in some ways, kind of takes students down a bit of a more frightening or intimidating route, because in the process of kind of saying that criticality should be judgmental, I think students feel very uncomfortable about that, because they think, okay, so I'm supposed to look at scholarly work and I'm supposed to be critical or judgmental of it, but I'm just a student. Who am I to be criticizing so and so scholar or professor with like decades of experience in this field?
Alexandra Patel 02:18
Yeah, I would perhaps even go a little bit further and say that criticality, for some people, actually means being negative, to be like a movie critic, or to, you know, really complain about things. And of course, like you say, students don't have that level of experience, to be critiquing an expert, you know somebody who's been an expert in the field for that long. So it's quite a challenge to develop that critical voice,
Tracy Dix 02:48
it is. And the thing is, so the challenge is, when you come to university, there are loads of resources that are aimed at trying to explain what criticality means and what the expectations are for your assignments. However, it almost seems to be written in its own secret language. Would you agree with that? Alex,
Alexandra Patel 03:10
yes. So you get things like, critically explain, critically evaluate. And yet, very rarely do you get, you know, what does criticality mean? And I think one of the reasons is, well, there's two reasons, from my point of view. One is that people don't really know how to put it into words it and it actually captures a whole load of different kind of forms of analysis and ways of thinking. And the other is this, it varies between different disciplines as well. You know which ways of questioning information are more valid in certain situations than in others.
Tracy Dix 03:49
Yes, and people are also often in disagreement with how you do criticality, because, you know, within the field of academia, lecturers and tutors have different approaches and different points of view in terms of how you analyze things and also preferences. So that's not particularly helpful when it comes to you know, students work being marked by academics. Does it?
Alexandra Patel 04:15
No? No. Okay, established that. It's actually quite confusing. But can I just jump in and ask? So why should we care?
Tracy Dix 04:27
Why should we care about criticality? Is it important? Why
Alexandra Patel 04:29
should students in particular be concerned about making sure they're developing these critical skills?
Tracy Dix 04:35
Okay, so I would say there are two main reasons, one which I will relate to the academic context. It's kind of the bedrock of all the things you're being assessed on at university. So your essays, your any type of assignment that you're set at university, whether it's a presentation, whether it's group work, whether it's you know. Of these authentic assessments that are meant to kind of mimic real life situations in your career. Later on, you are expected to be able to exercise criticality, which means that you are looking at what's required of you. So the assessment brief, and you're able to kind of apply it to your own analysis. So here I am, like going off into university lingo again, but I think we will elaborate on those things in more accessible ways a little bit later. And then finally, you have to kind of bring it all together. You have to understand who your who your marker is, and kind of pitch it to them in the right way.
Alexandra Patel 05:47
So it's a really important skill, and also you kind of extended that to a way of communicating in order for students to do well, to succeed and gets two, one or first class kind of marks in their essays and dissertations at university? Yeah, I totally agree. But I want to kind of think more more widely here, I guess, so, you know, if we're thinking about research and how it functions, you know, for communities, for society, for kind of research and development. Why is it important to be critical? I would say it's because it's how we generate new knowledge. It's that act of asking questions. It's saying, okay, somebody's just told me the earth is flat. Hmm, is that right? Maybe I should question that. Or, you know, what was it Galileo suggesting that perhaps the earth wasn't the center of the galaxy. Sorry, the Galaxy I sound like I've gone into Star Trek there. That wasn't the center of the universe, and the church kind of coming after him, because that was heresy. Whereas actually nowadays, obviously his research and his kind of criticality and that aspect has led to, you know, people now racing to be on the moon and on Mars and all those types of things. It has totally changed the way we look at the world and its place in the universe.
Tracy Dix 07:20
Wow. Okay, so that's a very broad aspirational it was a big one. So a very broad aspirational way of thinking about criticality. I mean, at the time, I might maybe speculate that Galileo didn't realize how big his findings were going to be. And I think in some ways, that is the beauty of research and academic thinking. You know, it's about actually kind of being a little bit playful with things and taking risks, and not necessarily knowing what you're going to find and where you're going to end up in the journey, which is something we've embraced in the episode today as well.
Alexandra Patel 08:00
But never know where we're going to end up. We never know
Tracy Dix 08:03
where we're going to end up, but we know that we will come up with something that's helpful for students. So the other thing I meant to touch on as well. So yes, Alex, you summarized really nicely that you know your degree is resting on how well you're able to critique the information that is available to you and that you find through your research process. On the other hand, it also helps you develop lots of really useful life skills upon which you'll be building your future career. And that's why we see a move, you know, towards students being set assignments like create a conference presentation. Because, you know, academia being what it is, lots of students go on to postgraduate study, and conference presentations are one of the ways that you disseminate that research. But also, you know, students may be asked to present a podcast, do a business pitch like a Dragon's Den style thing. For example, if you're studying archeology, you may be asked to do a presentation as if you are telling a group of school, school children, school visitors, about the site that you're working at. So they're all kind of employability skills that you're going to need, and criticality is fundamental to those skills as well. So I promised you know a playful exploration of what criticality is, and without necessarily knowing what the end result is going to be. So as someone from a literary background, I'm really interested in the sounds of words, feelings, resonances and implications. And I decided that since criticality is the same kind of noun as musicality, so they both have the suffix Itty. So let's get down to the itty bitties of what criticality is. I. By through a journey through musicality. So quite interestingly, the OED definition of musicality has more resonances with the Merriam Webster and Colin's definitions of criticality. I wasn't planning to check initially, but I thought, why not out of you know, just out of interest. And I did, kind of wrongly assume that the team behind the OED would know less than people who enjoy making music, listening to it, dancing to it, and any other interactions you may have with music. So for any musicians out there, you probably know more than I do. And but this was my assumption, and a big part of criticality is challenging our assumptions. So what the OED offers is a broad view of what music and musicality is. I want to pick up on what it says regarding accomplishment or aptitude in music musical sensibility, and draw the connections later on in this episode to aptitude and criticality and critical sensibility. So what does music comprise? I'm back to the Oxford English Dictionary again. It's, you know, it talks about rhythm, notes, beats, instruments, sometimes all of these things, sometimes none of these things. It can be both melodious or discordant. It is also very much a matter of taste, of culture, social conditioning and so on. So I would say that the definition that's provided here is a fairly neutral one. What do you think of it? Alex,
Alexandra Patel 11:43
what has just occurred to me is that you are right now being quite you're performing a form of critical analysis. What you're doing is comparing and contrasting musicality. And you know, what does music mean? What does critical mean? What does criticality
Tracy Dix 12:00
mean, Yep, that's right. So, yeah, that was the plan. Even though I didn't quite know where I was going to get to when I started on this journey, I just thought, hmm, let's find another word that has the kind of same form that criticality has, and let's see how it contributes to our understanding. This
Alexandra Patel 12:25
is a bit of a blueprint as to how to do a compare and contrast, in a way, one of the kind of most fundamental building blocks of a type of critical analysis. Yeah.
Tracy Dix 12:36
So you start with what you know, you start with your own assumptions, and then you start questioning those assumptions, and you question the things you know. I think the skill behind being critical is forming that awareness of understanding that what you know is not what other people know as well, if that makes sense, and also understanding or refining the method of challenging your thinking. Not everyone is self aware. In fact, this is something I read quite a long time ago, but a tiny proportion of the population are actually self aware. A lot of people like to think that they are, but most people aren't confronting So based on this dictionary definition of what music is, we can kind of elucidate that our qualities of criticality are very much determined by the same qualities of our personal taste, our culture, our upbringing and social conditioning. And as I mentioned, interesting. Go on. What's interesting about it?
Alexandra Patel 13:42
Well, so your criticality will be different from my criticality. A very different kind of background. Will ask different questions. They'll have different beliefs and starting points and different ideas about how the world works, and that will affect how they come to interpret anything they interact with. So like a research experiment or an article they're reading a manuscript or a book or whatever theories they're working with.
Tracy Dix 14:13
Yes, and it's really good you pointed that out because I hope this would be reassuring to students as well, just because you don't think the same way that someone else does you know say during your seminar discussions and situations like that, or even in group work, doesn't mean that you're wrong. It doesn't mean that you know less it doesn't mean that your opinion is less valid. It just means you have a different point of view, a
Alexandra Patel 14:38
very valid and helpful point of view, because to understand something properly, you have to see it from lots of different perspectives.
Tracy Dix 14:46
Yes, you do, and you know it can be quite difficult to be assertive about kind of speaking that truth if you're a relatively shy person. But it's really important to try and do that anyway, isn't it, as much as you can Yeah. And through the process of discussion, challenging each other, we become more and more aware of our qualities, of how critical we are, how we see the world, but also we can try to then become more objective in our attitudes, which is also part of the process of criticality, becoming better at criticality? Yeah,
Alexandra Patel 15:22
so you're saying that once you acknowledge what our backgrounds bring to our own analysis, we can also say that that it's in itself can have limitations. You know, once you're aware of your particular viewpoints and beliefs, you can kind of account for those and then deliberately go out and seek different ways of looking at something to really kind of test yourself.
Tracy Dix 15:45
Yes, and that's why being at university is also such a hotbed for ideas and discussion and kind of intellectual exchange, because you get people from all over the world coming together, lots of different backgrounds, you know. I mean, you might have gone to like a multicultural school, for example, but everyone is kind of still based in the same geographical location, whereas at university, people come from everywhere, don't they, and with that comes multiple perspectives.
Alexandra Patel 16:15
Yes, definitely.
Tracy Dix 16:19
Okay, so a question for you, Alex, what do you think of when you think of music? Have you got any favorite music?
Alexandra Patel 16:25
Oh, my goodness. Well, I am not a musical person. I can't sing. I People say I'm tone deaf. To be honest, I don't have a particular type of music that I listen to, so I'm not sure I would probably go for a very standard definition of, you know, I think music is it's not speaking, it's something in addition to that. So probably often involves changing the tone and pitch and other words that I don't really know what the meaning of are. Of a person's voice, and perhaps at using some external artifacts, I want to say instruments, but that feels like it narrows it down too much to kind of accompany it. That's probably where I'd start.
Tracy Dix 17:18
Yeah, so often music might incorporate someone's voice, the way someone uses their voice, the way they use what is, what are generally known as instruments. However, I guess that's not always the case. So let's look at some examples that would probably challenge most people's assumptions of what music is. So my first example is stomp, which is really, really cool. It's been around for a very long time, but let's have a look at a clip first, and then we can discuss it. Okay, so stomp is nothing new. It's been around for 30 years, but I think the main reason it's taken the world by storm and place to, you know, like sell out theaters worldwide, is because it really challenges most people's beliefs of what music is. I think it would be fair to say that no one is classically trained in Matchbox broomstick or shopping trolley music in the same way that you know we have classical pianists, violinists or cellists, for example. So it takes quite a bit of risk to get a troop of artists together, playing and exploring with different objects in such an experimental way. And then you have the chemistry between artists, and it really comes together like a kind of urban orchestra that speaks to its audience. Because, for example, you know, you've got that the girl in the middle who gives like her, her colleague, like a little bit of attitude. You've got, the one at right at the end, who shows off what he can do with the matchbox. And, you know, seeks the applause, wants the attention. So now, what can we learn about criticality from stomp? If I was to sum it up, I would say the first thing is, don't be afraid to experiment. Find some plausible ideas and play around with it. Really develop those ideas and see where, where, where they go. The second point is, look at your evidence. So through the process of playing with these match boxes, you know, these artists would have found some sounds and some dynamics that resonate with them. And you can kind of see that in the performance chemistry in the video. My third point is, develop your evidence. So I said earlier on about developing your ideas. It's a similar kind of premise. So they practice, they practice the rhythms with these match boxes, and they get better and better at it. They play with different types of rhythms. They play with it in different ways. They probably adapt it to, you know, like, how can say plucking on guitar strings be adapted to what you can do on a matchbox? What is the effect that it creates? States, is that enough to kind of captivate an audience? So when you get some interesting evidence or results, it's a bit like scrutinizing what you have and then refining it so that the good stuff becomes better and its relevance to your end goal becomes clearer and clearer. Is that making sense so far, yes,
Alexandra Patel 20:21
definitely. I can imagine there would have been a lot of things they tried out and for various reasons, just didn't take off. Didn't work. And one of those reasons might be that it couldn't be translated into a performance. So like you said about, you know, communicating it to an audience.
Tracy Dix 20:40
Yeah. So there would have been lots of things that didn't work, a lot of failures on the way, and ideas that are eliminated. And the important thing to point out as well is just because an idea might seem good in the moment could mean it's worth developing for the future, and you might not use it for the kind of purpose you need it for now. So, for example, if you're working on an assignment, you might come across some really interesting ideas, but decide to shelve them for, like, a future project, because you need to be focused on in this case, like, what would, what would kind of captivate my audiences for this show now, and that other idea that had a bit of potential. Let's leave it to another time, another purpose, another assignment, if that makes sense.
Alexandra Patel 21:28
And so what's really nice about this example is that you've shown how doing something really crazy and out there, you know, something that isn't just playing, just playing a violin, not to put down people who spend their lives learning to play violins, because that's an awesome feat, but it's they have created a new type of music, something totally unique and out there, which will also lead to further discoveries and challenge the boundaries of what music actually is, and you can see how in research, just replicating the same methodologies and doing the same thing or testing the same ideas that you've already learned about isn't advancing knowledge in your discipline. That's why being creative and going for these quite unusual ideas. That's really where you know, creating new knowledge comes from. But like you say, Tracy, you have to be careful, and you have to be very aware that some ideas the public aren't going to be ready for. Your markers won't be ready for, they'll be way too out there. So those ones you might put on the shelf for a bit, and think maybe, maybe I'll come back to it, or maybe it's for somebody else to explore later on. And there might be ones that just don't fit the need. You know. In the context of music, it's you know, the audience aren't going to enjoy it. Or in the context of science or academia, it's a case that you know. It's it's not discovering something useful. It's not a direction of knowledge that people are interested in pursuing. It's not a useful question. So there are other ideas that have to be kind of, you know, put on the shelf or thrown away because it's not relevant. It's not helpful or useful. But then there are some which, you know, you work on, you develop, you refine, and that becomes something really, really important, and that's really kind of groundbreaking, and that's what we all want to do, really, isn't it?
Tracy Dix 23:28
That is what we want to do. Okay, so that those were some really interesting points that you made there, Alex, and two things I picked up. One, you kind of joked a little bit that we're being kind of critical of violinists, which we aren't at all. So I think it's clear from storms that probably their background, you know, of these artists is not in like string instruments, but for matchbox, probably percussion. So some of them are probably kind of trained in as percussionists, and they've kind of taken those concepts, those techniques, to the matchbox, which I can't believe I'm actually saying on a podcast, but there you go and seeing like so how does, how does percussion, you know? How does playing percussion, whatever instrument you might be thinking of, how do those skills translate to to playing a matchbox while developing a show and but those are parts of the process of kind of being critical when it comes to a university assignment, because you are taking what you already know, so skills that you already have, but you are developing them for a different context, the context being, You know, the topic or the challenge that you've been set in your assignment, through the question that you've been asked, you're pitching that knowledge in a different way. You're looking at it with new eyes. The other thing, the other point you said about you know, when information isn't useful, you might shelve it, or sometimes. Goes out the window. And I would say that okay, for anyone who's particularly serious about research as well, is there are more and more different ways of disseminating research nowadays. Podcasts are obviously one method. And so it's really important that to be aware that as a researcher, you may be kind of presenting the very serious scholarly work through research papers, through conference presentations, but increasingly, academics are putting their work out on places like YouTube and social media. I've noticed a trend whereby, you know, there are lots of PhD candidates who as a kind of revision method. I think they do their reading and they share it with the public, and it includes their references as well. So I would say that's a form of dissemination that's helping to get their work out there, you know, while they are studying, which is very astute, I think,
Alexandra Patel 25:58
yeah, and it develops some really useful communication skills. And there's that good old saying, if you want to really understand something, you need to be able to teach it to somebody like your grandmother, I think, is how the saying goes. Because if you can take a complex idea and break it down into a simple explanation, that means you've really understood it absolutely.
Tracy Dix 26:22
And I mean, that's something we do quite often with students. You know, when they say, oh, I need help with my assignment and how to develop it, we're like, okay, can you summarize it for us? So happy to always be someone's honorary grandmother.
Alexandra Patel 26:37
I'm not, I'm not that old Tracy.
Tracy Dix 26:39
Neither am I. But we can just pretend, you know, we tend to be wise. That's what I meant by a grandmother. I know, I know. Okay, so, so back to stomp. We've actually touched on this already when I talked about disseminating, so pitching it to your audience. So here you kind of take, you know, playing a matchbox, creating rhythms, and you develop a story. From there, you add expression, you give it characters. These characters start developing relationships. So, you know, it means something to the people watching. So what does this mean in terms of presenting your research in an academic piece of work, like an essay, because obviously someone who's marking your work is quite different from a member of the audience sitting in the theater that's relaxing watching a show. There are similarities, however, so I would, I would argue that you know your audience, compare them to an academic so they know your subject area. They might go to a theater quite often, but they don't know what you have in store for them. So they don't know how you've interpreted their question. They set the question. Here's a task. Roll with it and see what you come up with. They don't know what you've done with your sources. So you need to lead them on the journey and like, hold their attention at every step of the way. Don't let them get lost. So with stomp, you know, it had it not come together in terms of the costume. So they've gone for a very urban look. And that is it all kind of comes together in terms of the way the the artists move, the way they play their instruments. It's for attitude. It's not like a classical performance, if you say, were to compare it to like classical ballet, for example, is very, very different. So the idea is, everything comes together. So there isn't this kind of feeling of, wait a minute, why did they do that? That doesn't quite work, and it becomes really disjointed. You don't want your argument to be disjointed. You don't want your marker to get lost in your your interpretation of the question and of the materials that you found. So when it comes to finally presenting your argument, that is not the experimental part of the process. The experimentation is what happens before you construct the argument. Okay, so I think for most of us, we would think that Mongolian throat singing is really quite different from anything we've seen before. I mean, you might have come across it. My family are quite into throat singing. I think they've seen they don't do it, but they've seen it, and they enjoy watching it in performance. So what can we learn about criticality from this throat singer? Again, it's about how to challenge our assumptions and ask better questions in order to overcome our biases and social conditioning. So what kind of assumptions are being challenged here I see one of the judges say, you know, and they're kind of, what's the word? And the feedback to this performer that he managed to hit two different notes at one time. And so the convention with music, well, more traditional, more conventional music, is that people are only able. To sing one note at a time. Another assumption that I might suggest is generally that beautiful music is harmonious and smooth, whereas in some places this sounds a little bit discordant, the sound is a little bit rough, but somehow it's very intriguing and very emotive at the same time, I
Alexandra Patel 30:22
feel like that's about Coldplay. Sometimes
Tracy Dix 30:25
I don't know a lot about Coldplay, so you're challenging me. I might, I might research that later. The third assumption is that I think it's, it's kind of a well, widely held thing that singers who are accomplished are able to breathe and sing from the diaphragm. They don't sing from their throats. And singing from your throat is often considered by like music experts to be not very sophisticated, not very skilled. But if you watch the interview with this musician later on, he actually says, you need to, you know, to train in throat singing. It's not easy at all. It doesn't look easy by any means. You know, to be able to combine so many different styles of music in one performance. I feel it's really admirable. But he also says, you know, if you don't have the right kind of teacher, you could really damage your voice, and the other thing I would recognize it that is that it's definitely not easy to question the foundations of ideas that are often promoted to us as facts. I mean, through our school life, we're constantly being taught things as if they're facts. We're constantly trying to, you know, do our best in exams and achieve full mouths by presenting that knowledge back to our teachers, back to our markers. But University ascending is very different in the sense that you are more recognized for your skills in critical analysis than you are for just presenting the knowledge in your assignments.
Alexandra Patel 32:00
Yeah, so it's questioning those facts, well, that I would say I don't necessarily believe that anything is a fact. To me, a fact is what the majority of people believe in at a given point in time. But you know, should some new knowledge, some new discovery, a different way of looking at it, come along, that fact may well change,
Tracy Dix 32:25
yes, and it's really a matter of perspective as well. So it's kind of emerging and the kind of decolonizing of university education that a lot of the foundations of disciplines are not actually based on any kind of rigorous testing like it's supposed to be. So nowadays, I know, I know I'm being outrageous, but you know, kind of, if you think about the time, like before universities, the establishment, the establishment of knowledge, you know, very important people were kind of just saying things, and then that became seminal. And then from there, it became the basis of a lot of beliefs which are hard to challenge, but are now being challenged, which is kind of intriguing and also very exciting time in academia for people who are kind of open to those prospects, I think, yeah, yeah. I think that's that's a conversation for a whole nother episode, but it was quite intriguing to touch on for a moment anyway. Okay, shall we go to the next example? Okay, so I picked this version of snow. Ravens, very remarkable singing, because here she's at a psychedelic science conference, which, you know, I guess some people may argue, is not exactly academic, but it almost kind of confers it that credibility. Not that I feel it needs it, but if you do kind of look her up, watching her sing in nature is even more incredible and moving. So what can we learn about criticality from snow Raven? So by now, we've mentioned this quite a few times now, so you probably get the idea. But I think the point is to look at the same entity. So we're talking about music from multiple dimensions, from multiple cultures. So many people may historically view instruments and garments based on very natural, traditional and especially indigenous materials as rustic or primitive. We are probably subconsciously influenced by now very outdated narratives around you know, like cowboys versus Indians, for example, which has evolved to indigenous versus settler or colonial narratives. However, the diminished rights of many indigenous people compared to settlers in many developed nations would indicate that. The former is generally considered less sophisticated and inferior. However, snow Raven overturns these assumptions with the complexity and authenticity of her singing when So, when I watched her perform, I was kind of thinking, you know, Is she better able to imitate the sounds of nature than some of the most advanced music technology that we have. I mean, I don't really know much about music technology, but you know, things like synthesizers AI come to mind. And obviously I've made some generalizations here in in these moments, because I'm not a music expert. But that's another thing to point out. When you're presented with an essay topic, it's not assumed that you're an expert on that topic. It gives you a prompt you know, for you to identify lines of inquiry and areas that you want to research so you you develop your knowledge in those areas. It's not about being an expert in it in the first place, because, if you were, I mean, what's the point of kind of undertaking that research? And also, I mean, to add another dimension to this, it's, I would say it's impossible to be an expert in something with such a well kept origins. I mean, what she does is in a very specific niche, I would say, however, like I said, these initial observations do give me the foundations to challenge and form deeper inquiries into how she would redefines our perception of music. You know, should I wish to kind of write an article that's kind of studying her work and comparing it to other forms of music.
Alexandra Patel 36:45
So you made an interesting point there about how we don't need to be experts on, you know, a subject area, I guess, particularly when we're starting off and going out and even at the end of putting together a research project. And that is another area of criticality in itself, understanding the limitations of a piece of work. So this is important for not only understanding the limitations of your own work. So at the end of a project, you're able to say, well, you know, typically, you know, we often say, Well, this went horribly wrong. All the cell cultures died, all my plants died. I don't know what happened. That's one of the limitations of the study. I don't mean limitations in that sense. It's actually more about understanding what your conclusions can be applied to and what they can't be applied to. So, you know, say I did some educational research around school to children and how they learned to read in the UK. So that's the conclusions I might draw. Would be okay, phonics is absolutely brilliant. That's a method I had to help my kids with back in the day. However, you know, is that applicable to other groups of children? So you could say, Well, okay, what are the limitations here? Maybe it only works for that particular group of children in the UK. Would it work on adults, probably not, because we have a very different grasp of language and in terms of how words are put together. So probably wouldn't work there. Would it work in America? Yes, it probably would. It probably even came from America, I'm not sure. But because of the similarities of language, if you had a similar group of students, similar age in America, perhaps it would work. Would it work in other areas in Europe, different languages? Maybe not. You know how words are put together over there is quite different. So you can see how a conclusion from one research project is a really good and valuable insight into how that methodology works, and how those ideas, you know, play out. But it's limited. It works in certain contexts, and understanding those limitations actually makes it a more useful piece of knowledge, because you can say, okay, it works here because of this reason, but it doesn't work here because of a different reason, because it's a different situation. So in a way, it's not, it's not being negatively critical of a piece of work. It's actually understanding it better, and that, you know, that is added knowledge to that area. So of course, I'm not just talking about your own work here, understanding the limitations of other people's research works in exactly the same way. So if a piece of research has been done or hate coming up with these examples, okay, I'm going to go with class on middle class students, how they learn to read. Would that also apply to. The social situation that working class students come from, maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, but there would be different factors that you'd have to look into in order to be able to transfer a piece of research that somebody else has done from one context to another. So to some that are basically limitations are a very important area to kind of look into and to understand, and it's not a bad thing. It's actually developing your understanding of your conclusions and other people's conclusions better.
Tracy Dix 40:29
Yep. And I guess another way of putting it would be to say a limitation is understanding how far that knowledge applies. So you were saying when you were talking about middle class children and how they read, and that you were then going for another demographic. I think one thing I thought of was perhaps students for whom, like English is not their first language, their grasp of reading might be quite different because they have a kind of different base level of understanding, for example, and different approaches might be needed, especially if the language that they are familiar with is a very different kind of language from English, then other approaches might be needed. So the main thing to note with this experiment is bit of a social experiment involving Joshua Bell, the violinist. We had to obviously include a violinist today, because we've been talking about them so much. Is that the context, environment and audience are key to when it comes to criticality and looking at your evidence. So just a bit of background, just a day before this experiment took place, Joshua Bell played, you know, to a kind of packed out concert hall where I think the tickets were about $100 each, and then he went to a metro station, started playing. Apparently, I think he, like, took a taxi to the metro station and everything, just to ensure that his violin, which apparently is worth millions, didn't get too cold, because that would affect like, how well it plays. So he goes to the subway, subway station. He plays there for about 45 minutes, and he makes about $32 in kind of busking tips, which is very different from that $100 a ticket to a sold out concert hall. And so when it comes to criticality, when it comes to, you know, presenting your ideas in an argument, factors like context and presentation are important to consider. We talked about the audience as well. So in this case, it's an audience. And there's a contrast between, you know, busy time stretch commuters who are clearly focused on a goal. They want to get to where they headed, they haven't committed to a performance like theater goers would be. But also, you know, if you kind of look at his presentation, you know, his playing is obviously the same playing that he wouldn't, he would, he would do in a concert hall, but he stressed very differently. He doesn't look like a performer. He's almost just shown up in whatever he goes to a coffee shop bin, whipped out his violin and carried on. So out of context, it's amazing how little people then see the value of the skill, the artistry that goes behind it, which is why, you know, we were kind of talking about understanding what is relevant for your for your essay, because if you if you pile in a lot of information, the knowledge, as it were, but none, none of it actually kind of contributes to your critiquing of a particular issue, then it doesn't actually add value to your argument. It's not going to help you gain more marks.
Alexandra Patel 43:57
Yeah, so this makes me think about another kind of method of being critical, which is commonly called Socratic questioning. And if you were to Google Socratic questioning, you'll find that it's, it's basically a form of inquiry that involves or a form of learning that involves asking lots of questions. And you know, so what does this mean? And then what? And etc, etc. So it's very useful to have a look at that, but I'm going to focus in on two of the particular areas, the types of questions you can ask. One of them is around justification, and the other is around implications. And I've always said to people, when they're putting together a big piece of work, a big piece of writing, that in their introductions, they really need to justify why it's such an important piece of research. You know, why should the reader or the marker care about this piece of work? What's the impact? What you know, why is it important? Is this not just any other essay? Why should they give their attention to it?
Tracy Dix 45:04
So can you give examples of how a student might achieve these things?
Alexandra Patel 45:09
Well, I will put on my lab coat, go back to my PhD at this point, because that's the only research I can think of off the top of my head. So my my research was on, basically, I tickled locusts with paint brushes and videotaped their movements, analyzed their movements, and then looked at which parts of their nervous system control those movements. So that's one way you can describe it. But I mean, if I was to say, this is what I did, and now here's my thesis, which is, you know, two inches thick. Have a nice read. You're probably not going to be very motivated to even go to the conclusion and work out what it was about. I don't
Tracy Dix 45:51
know, Alex. I mean tickling locusts sound very cool,
Alexandra Patel 45:56
not when you do it for three years. But if I was to kind of take a step back and think about, well, why is this important for society? Why should you care Tracy in particular? I might say, well, it's not just about understanding how the nervous system works. It's not just about understanding how the brain controls limb movements. So in particular, we were looking at almost like a reaching movement. If you move your arm from, you know, the top of your head to reach a cup that's on your desk, it's a different movement than if you had your hand on your knee and moving it to reach a cup. But okay, that still doesn't sound very exciting, so great. You've understood how the brain does that. So what? Well, so what is actually? What can it be used for in wider society? If we can understand how the brain controls movements, we can program robots to be able to perform these types of movement with great precision. And we can see at the moment, the robotics industry is really taking off. I know of some unusual projects where they send robots into really dangerous places, like some kind of robotic snake that goes into nuclear reactors to help decommission them and things like that. So if you can translate it into something that's important, you know, we're talking about decommissioning nuclear power plants, protecting human lives, because robots can be sent in to do very precise, very accurate work that only otherwise humans could have done in the past. That's one area. Another really important area is being able to create really authentic artificial limbs. So if we understand how the brain controls are reaching movements, we can work out how to create an artificial limb that the brain can control and we can give back movements to large numbers of people, you know, we're talking about veterans, people being in accidents, and give them a much better quality of life. So now are you going to research? Sorry, are you going to read my thesis and perhaps fund my next bit of research, my grant proposal? If I was
Tracy Dix 48:21
an investor, I absolutely would fund it. Alex, I mean, we wouldn't
Alexandra Patel 48:25
if I just said, Will you give me, I don't know, 25,000 pounds to tickle locus for the next year?
Tracy Dix 48:31
No, but see if you, if you want a podcast like so something like brains on, for example, that's kind of very kid friendly. Title to the podcast like what tickling locusts teaches us about how we move or how we control our bodies, that would be quite a good hook. I want to know about tickling locusts. It sounds it sounds cool. Well,
Alexandra Patel 48:58
I know what I will get you for Christmas, then a little box of locusts straight to your door you can enjoy.
Tracy Dix 49:05
Alex, actually, I could tickle stick insects. We've got stick insects. I'm sure that's a good starting point for someone who is only a hobbyist and mildly interested in this. I mean
Alexandra Patel 49:17
research that looks at stick and sex and how they cross gaps in particular. Oh, there
Tracy Dix 49:24
you go. There you go. I am, however, very grateful that you're the one who tickled locusts for three years, so I don't have to. We should all be grateful to Alex Patel for your commitment to locust tickling.
Alexandra Patel 49:39
So looking at the justification for a piece of research or a project is really, really important in grabbing the audience's attention. But then at the end of your write up, the end of your dissertation, thinking about the implications of whatever you have concluded is also really, really important, because that's the last thing that the reader is going. To remember. So that's the point where you can say, Okay, this was my conclusion. These are the limitations. You know, it can be applied in these contexts, but further work needs to be done in this area, in this area, for it to be more applicable. And then you can talk about, you know, what that actually means for society. So again, this is going back to the justification for that research, and wrapping it all together and together that makes a really powerful story about the conclusions and the work you've done.
Tracy Dix 50:31
Yep, so what opportunities does that work present and what problems does it solve for humanity? I did say this podcast might have an alternative title. I think where we've gotten to now is something along the lines of meta analysis of criticality through the medium of musicality. It's kind of rhythmic, but I think we can draw a line under that now, and I have an example to discuss that relates to actual academic evidence. So I was talking to a student recently about an animal testing. So a topic she was set by her her tutor was, is animal testing ever justified? You know, can you argue that the benefits outweigh the harm that it caused, or something along those lines? And during the conversation, she said to me, okay, so I've, I've argued, you know, I've, I've gone into some scholars who talk about how animal testing can be justified, even if it causes harm, physical harm to animals. And then she told me about Cochrane, who argues that things like rat maze experiments can be justified, and they're absolutely fine, because they don't cause harm to animals. And then she kind of went off in her description of how she handled the question, and I was like, hang on a second there, you're making an assumption. And I don't think she necessarily was aware of it, because what Cochrane is basically arguing is that these experiments are justified because they don't harm the rats. I think as far as we can see, we can see that they don't physically harm the rats in the way that a lot of other animal testing does, like, you know, applying chemicals to them that are intended for the pharmaceutical industry or for the cosmetic industry, for example. And then, you know, if these animals have a reaction to it, then we can kind of deduce that, oh, it's going to be an irritant for human users as well. Or we might need to ensure that, you know, the volume that's used in cosmetics or pharmaceuticals are kept to a below a certain level so it doesn't cause irritation or doesn't cause harm. Yeah.
Alexandra Patel 52:56
So I just want to emphasize that, you know, animal testing in pharmaceutical industry is a really important area. It's a very sensitive area, but it's how people develop new drugs and then work out things like the, you know, the lethal dose. How much can we give to get a therapeutic response before it's actually going to harm humans and kill people? And that's, you know, not even thinking about identifying kinds of side effects that might come out of animal testing. So I guess I kind of want to draw a distinction a little bit between cosmetic testing being, you know, a lot more, from my perspective, a lot more debatable, but pharmaceutical testing being something that you know will save lives,
Tracy Dix 53:54
so the purpose is an important consideration. Yes and yes, this also reminds me of something I saw, admittedly on social media, someone was relating an incident, you know, who's a cosmetic surgeon. And, you know, they meet someone, people go, Oh, what do you do and all that. And they're like, oh, so how do you feel about kind of fueling this kind of vanity industry, you know? Because the assumption was obviously that, oh, people have cosmetic surgery because they're unhappy with the way they look, and they just want to look better have fuller lips or higher cheekbones, or, you know, reverse aging and things like that, which is an assumption. And this surgeon said, well, actually, no, I am a cosmetic surgeon for people who have, for example, been in fires or unfortunately met with, have been in road accidents that have altered their appearance, and so he kind of gives them that self confidence, and I mean, basically gives them their life back. So there are a lot of you. Things, activities that go on, or processes in research that have multiple uses. And, yeah, I mean, just to kind of add to the you know, what impact are you having? There are multiple ways of looking at things, is what I want to say, I guess. Okay, so back to back to the maze, then back to the rat maze experiments. My question was around emotional and or psychological pain, you know, other kinds of trauma that might be caused to rats. I mean, earlier on with stomp, we talked about, you know, people making music with matchboxes, and someone being trained in like classical violin. What if a child was to pick up a matchbox and start trying to play music with it? You know, how would people react? I think, you know, a lot of parents, the more liberal of them, might be like, Oh, okay, what are you doing to you know, perhaps even snatching it out of their hands and going, No, don't touch. That's dangerous. Don't start a fire kind of reaction. So if we were to trans, you know, kind of take that assumption and explore what would happen if you were, for example, to let children lose in a maze, and they had to find food, and then the ones who found food quicker were the ones who were kind of labeled intelligent or genetically superior, and then the ones who were slower were considered like stupid or inferior. I mean, they're kind of multiple levels here, of course, but I feel that
Alexandra Patel 56:32
sounds like a great day out for the kids. Tracy opening this maze.
Tracy Dix 56:37
When am I opening this maze? Well, so I deliberately picked a picture of a very industrial looking maze with extremely high walls and very clinical. And I feel like if you were to let a child loose in this without knowing what's expected, you know, you kind of separate them from their family and everything that they perceive to be safe in the world, it would probably cause quite a few kids distressed. I mean, some of them might be like, Yeah, whatever. Let's go. You know, they might be able to embrace the curiosity behind it and just dash off to see what's there, just for fun. But not all children are the same. I might argue that not all rats are the same. I think rat owners would say that they do have personalities. So, so my point here and anyway, is that we can relate our current knowledge, so my knowledge of children, for example, to very established ways of running experiments, you know, and and also like we can relate that to current ways of thinking. So for example, we now also know that women have very different metabolisms to men, and different kind of productivity patterns going on our hormonal cycles. So how would you know that the rat isn't just having a down day in its cycle, and it gets thrown into the maze, and then it gets treated badly, because the technicians are like, Oh, this rat stupid, you know? And then they kind of treat it in a more deprecating way, which is one of the results of one of these, the results of one of these rat maze experiments is they kind of noted that technicians were more likely to kind of treat rats with respect that were genetically superior than the ones that weren't.
Alexandra Patel 58:28
I know that's really quite sad, because a lot of these types of experiments developed like a rat model for schizophrenia or rat model for I don't know, I'm thinking about mental illnesses at this point, but rat model for diabetes, for example. And so some are genetically created to be inferior.
Tracy Dix 58:50
Yes, they are inferior.
Alexandra Patel 58:51
Genetically created to be different from normal, you know, to have this illness,
Tracy Dix 58:57
yes, which, in these days of, you know, more awareness around neuro divergence. I feel like there's a different spin to that conversation than that might have been once upon a time. So I think on a kind of timeline, you know, there are established ways of doing things, but we can also apply, like, what we know now about, you know, personalities, and take that knowledge and kind of ask questions, ask better questions about established ways of doing things, and see what that throws up. I mean, I feel like with this student, I kind of rocked the world a little bit because then she said, Oh, am I contradicting myself then, because I was using this to make the point, you know, that it doesn't cause harm, and so it's justified. And I was like, Well, no, it shows a higher level of criticality that you understand, you know that your evidence is a little bit more nuanced than that. So Cochrane made this argument, but Cochrane was of his time, and now we know differently, and so there's no harm in that. And saying, Okay, so where, where do I end up in my discussion? You know, how does what Cochrane says And compared to what we know like, how do we come to a new conclusion about, you know, causing harm to animals and what causes harm to them?
Alexandra Patel 1:00:21
Yeah, yeah. It's particularly with something as sensitive as you know, our understanding of consciousness in non human animals. It's something that has to be constantly re evaluated and reconsidering.
Tracy Dix 1:00:34
That cat is definitely an emotionally attached being, isn't it, Alex, who's currently vying for your attention and waving its tail in the screen. So if you were to access this podcast by video, you will have a great time looking at Alex's tail with Alex's tail, Alex's cat with its waving tail. Yeah. Okay, so there will be more on criticality over time. If you have any questions, do send them in to us, and we'll try our best to answer them. If you'd like to know how to relate criticality to an essay topic, feel free to email us. It's team at weird learning.co.uk and we will try our best to kind of apply the principles that we teach to your essay question, and we'll share it with you.
Alexandra Patel 1:01:26
Yes, we also offer one to one consultations to look at things like dissertations or essays, and so we can, of course, go into your criticality specifically around the topic you're looking at in more detail with you, and I'm planning on putting out some workshops around dissertation, specifically in the new year. So please follow us and look at our website for more information about these links will be in the comments and in our bios. Thanks.
Tracy Dix 1:02:01
Yeah. Alternatively, you can sign up to our mailing list and claim one of our wonderful freebies, like a guide on how to do fast and focused reading, also something on well support on how to get started with your essay, so it sets you off on a trajectory for first class grades. So we've got that on offer as well. If you go to our website or have a look through any of our social media channels, and we'll include the links in the show notes as well. So thank you very much for joining us in this discussion today. I hope you've found it helpful, and if you have any questions, do let us know. We'll address them in future podcast episodes around criticality. For now, take care. Goodbye.
