Teaching, Learning, and Thinking in Fractal Patterns

Dr. Edward Nuhfer, Director of Faculty Development, California State University at Channel Islands ed.nuhfer@csuci.edu

ABSTRACT: A group of faculty and faculty developers have

been working since 1993 on developing better instruction through
a week-long development retreat called "Boot Camp for Profs."
Benefits of this camp have spread to other communities too.
The program derives from a model that uses awareness of fractal
properties of neural networks in the brain to aid development of
successful college instructors. (See
http://profcamp.tripod.com/bootcamp08.htm.) Emphases include
(1) understanding the process of improving education by reflecting
on the educational process through different scales, (2) recognizing
paramount importance of the affective domain on successful
learning and teaching, (3) realizing that assessment and evaluation
are attempts to measure fractal systems, (4) recognizing that
students learn better when they understand the process of brain
development and what is happening to them as they learn, and (5)
developing and maintaining sophisticated teaching philosophies as
blueprints for action. Employment of knowledge surveys, learning
documents, student management teams, and learning design
exercises, which incorporate both individual reflection time and
cooperative interactive engagements, further aid success for
students and instructors.

The Importance of Generators

The length of a coastline is one of the earliest

examples to show that the dimensions of a
fractal form change depending on the tool of
measure. A one-dimensional line is the
simplest fractal form. Brain neurology
consists of three dimensional networks
folded upon one another. Fractals don't have
absolute dimensions, but they have order.

Where faculty cooperate to plan outcomes thoughtfully, they

can work together as "one large brain" to develop courses that
contribute to a larger vision of students' growth through curricula
and degrees. Because the neural networks required for high level
thinking (Perry model and others' derivatives) cannot develop in a
semester, planned curricula are essential. Great courses taught by
great teachers working alone are surely insufficient. We find most
curricula are not really planned; most are simply assemblages of
courses. Current evaluative practices and less attention to the
scholarship of teaching and learning keep faculty attention focused
only at the scale of courses and there, most often, just on content.

The sheer power of the affective domain makes it the principal

influence on the life decisions and satisfaction of instructors and
students. Students choose colleges, classes, major, and careers
largely from feelings that become action choices. Math anxiety
and writer's block can change aspirations of students while
morale, campus atmosphere, and quality of life trigger lifechanging decisions by faculty. It seems impossible to divorce a
single cognitive thought or decision completely from the affective
domain. Faculty development and education of students require
working with the affective domain. The critical first moments of
courses, classes and introduction of new topics can produce better
learning by engaging the affective domains of students in positive
ways. Wanting to learn is an affective decision. The neural
networks that involve affective domains are likewise fractal. They
can learn and develop, just as can our cognitive domains.

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Applications - Knowledge Surveys

Fractal thinkers appreciate multiple measures, and knowledge surveys are a
fractal thinker's tool. Most yield well over a hundred measurements-per-student
directed at specific details of content learning. The survey shown below yields
200 measurements per student both pre- and post- course, which translates into
about 8000 bits of information for assessment of a class of twenty. Unlike tests,
knowledge surveys address a strong affective component in their item
responses. A test item might read: "Describe the scientific method and provide
an example of its application," whereas the knowledge survey item might state:
"I can describe the scientific method and provide an example of its
application." These are two measures of different neural networks that involve
understanding about what science is and how it operates. The "I can..." is a
probe of the affective domain. Knowledge surveys provide samples of
cognitive and affective domains operating together. They provide reliable
information that taps neural networks not sampled by tests and grades.

Concept of a Knowledge Survey

Lessons: We can't measure a fractal form with a number that is

uniquely correct, but we can understand fractal forms, if we use
multiple measures. There will never be a perfect test or survey that,
when used by itself, will ever allow us to understand a learner.

Power of the Affective Domain

The actions and traits often translate into fractal patterns in time.
Becoming educated results from a series of events in time. Like
rainfall patterns, "aha moments" typified by changes in thinking are
punctuated events in a fractal pattern interspersed with many
common events and even dry spells, when it seems like not much
change is happening. The complex form of experts' neural
networks can do many things that the simpler form of novices
cannot do. Fractal awareness helps us to realize that we need to be
patient with students. Most are developing, not being intransigent.

How long is a coastline?

Let length of coastline be L. Let divider width used to measure L be r.

Why fractals?
All learning, skill development, and progression toward higher
levels of thinking involves building a neural network through
establishing and stabilizing synaptic connections. These synaptic
connections are fractal. Fractal forms develop by a recursive
operation on a basic "seed" called a generator. In the figure below,
the generator is a simple Y and the recursive operation is a
replacement of each branch of the Y with another Y generator. As
we learn, we literally "grow a brain." This brain is marvelous and is
truly capable of infinite thought. Not only are no two people alike,
no two thoughts are even exactly alike. Because our brain is fractal,
many of our actions and traits have fractal qualities.

Fractal Challenges to Educators

Good beginnings are essential. Complex fractal forms exhibit

qualities of the generators that form them. Below is the generator
model that developed through the experiences with Boot Camp for
Profs. We found that faculty development is healthy when it
provides attention to all six colored components. All are
assessable. Whatever generator an instructor possesses will
ultimately determine her/his operational teaching philosophy, the
course documents such as syllabi, and the quality of lessons
enacted in class.

In the brain, all cognitive

knowledge and learning is
connected inextricably with the
affective domain, much like two
clouds of colored smoke blown
together. All action involves a
prior affective feeling. We "feel"
a decision before we can
articulate it or act on it.

1. How many letters are in the English

alphabet?
2. How many words can those letters
produce?
3. How many ideas can be expressed by
those words?
4. How many stories are possible?
5. Might these be infinite in a single
discipline?
6. Might these be infinite in a single
discipline described in a single
language?
7. Can all human knowledge/experience
be accurately described by words?

Those unfamiliar with test reliability presume their tests and grades are
measures of "actual knowledge." In fact, most faculty-made tests and grades
have reliability of only about R=0.2 to 0.6. In contrast, knowledge surveys
have reliabilities of R > 0.9. This observation doesn't mean that we should
give up tests. Rather it means we must take multiple measures in order to
obtain multiple perspectives of fractal phenomena too complex to understand
through information yielded by single tools.

The above quiz juxtaposed to the positron emission image from Petersen et al.
(1989) shows the problem of trying to assess a network capable of infinite
thought. The complex fractal neural network is just the wiring. When live with
neurochemicals and electrical signals, there are infinite combinations of form,
sequence, and intensitiesinfinite fractal patterns in space and time. This
explains why tests and test questions fail to achieve reliability, why multiple
choice results don't correlate with essays, and why different tests shouldn't be
expected to correlate so perfectly with one another or with alternate measures.
They are measures of separate transects across different fractal neural networks
and are not really measures of the same thing.

Some Euclidean Misconceptions of Education

Confusing content with learned
content makes us think we can
use single measures.
Content alone is
roughly finite and
quantifiable.

1. = I have insufficient knowledge to answer this question.

2. = I have partial knowledge or know where to quickly (20
minutes or less) obtain a complete answer to this question.
3. = I can fully answer this question with my present
knowledge.

How do we diagnose MBTI

or Multiple Intelligences?

Once in the brain,

learned content
becomes part of a
network of thought
and feeling that is
infinite.

Applications - Reflection Journals/Self Assessments

Create self-assessment rubrics; use often! Have students enter their
reflections and score their own confidence in reflective journals such as double
entry journals. The highest levels of thinking (Perry, and others-see below)
involve a meld of content and skill expertise with awareness of the influence of
one's own affective mind. This state is not one of irrelevant emotion and
insignificant feeling but rather is the integration of the affective domain on a
conscious level with high levels of cognitive development. Alverno College's
curricula use self assessment as a primary vehicle to high level thinking.
General Equivalence of Some Models of Adult Thinking
Emphases-->

content-intensive emphasis
2.
Multiplicity
Pre-legitimate

Perry, 1968;
1999 2 nd ed.

1.
Basic Duality

King &
Kitchener,
1994

1.
Knowledge
experienced

Blosser,
1973; 1991

1.
Cognitive Memory

2.
Convergent
Thinking

Bloom,
1956

1.
Knowledge

2.
Comprehension

Biggs &
Collis,
1982
"SOLO"
De Bono,
1985

4.
Relativism
Subordinate

4.
2.
3.
Evidence
Experience and authority
Unclear
accepted that
as
distinction of
fits
source
evidence from
established
belief
belief

1.
2.
Pre-structural Unistructural

White Hat (factual)

+ process-intensive emphasis
3.
Multiplicity
Subordinate

3. Divergent Thinking
&
4. Evaluative Thinking (crude with
poor justifications)
3. Application 4. Analysis
5. Synthesis and 6. Evaluation
(5 & 6 done crudely)

3.
Multistructural

5.
Contextual
Relataivism

+ self-reflection
6.
Commitment
Foreseen

7.
Initial
Commitment

E. B. Nuhfer
+ judgment from experience
8.
Multiple
Commitments

6.
7.
Beliefs
Beliefs justified based
justified by
on relative value of
comparing
competing evidence
evidence and
opinion
4
4.
Evaluative Thinking
Evaluative Thinking
(with increasingly
(with better justifications)
sophisticated
justification)
6. Evaluation
5. Synthesis (done better)
(done with
6. Evaluation (done better)
sophistication)

5.
Beliefs justified
within context

4.
Relational

+ Black Hat, Yellow Hat (advocacy based on facts & evidence)

5.
Extended Abstract

+ Green Hat
(creative thinking)

9.
Resolve

This area
is not a
product of cognitive
development
alone. This is largely
the realm described
under
"Emotional Intelligence"
by Goleman, 1995.
Actions & decisions are
made
with sophisticated
frameworks of
reasoning
plus a recognized
influence of an ethical
framework, emotions
and
other affective factors
+ Red Hat (emotional)
+ Blue Hat
(conscious synthesis
of all hats)

Applications - Teaching Philosophies as Action Plans

"The harder I study it, the less I understand it!" "The more I learn, the bigger
this problem seems to get!" are both exclamations noted when dealing with
phenomena that have fractal qualities. Fractal thinkers realize they are not
performing measures on absolute quantities of skills and knowledge. Instead,
they know they are seeking understanding of fractal neural networks with no
absolute dimensions. This introduces a different awareness about how to
understand learning, evaluation, and assessment. It's obvious why MBTI and
intelligence types require more than a few survey items.

Operating without a sophisticated teaching philosophy is like trying to nail

together a house without blueprints. The six component colored generator near
the top of Column 2 is really a graphic teaching philosophy. The root, self
introspection, is largely affective in that it confirms what we most want to do as
professionals in our teaching. We need to be versed in the other components to
the extent that we can articulate their use in our philosophies. An individual
who picks up a course document such as a syllabus, a learning assignment or
an exam should be able to see critical parts of its creator's teaching philosophy.