Page 149 - Rižnar, Igor, and Klemen Kavčič (ed.). 2017. Connecting Higher Education Institutions with Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 149
Is Higher Education in Dire Straits?
human beings. Following the work of Kahneman (2011) who writes in
his outstanding book Thinking, Fast and Slow that ‘as we navigate our
lives, we normally allow ourselves to be guided by impressions and feel-
ings, and the confidence we have in our intuitive beliefs and preferences
is usually, but not always, justified. We are often confident even when
we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our er-
rors than we are’ (p. 39), it is easy to believe that both teachers and edu-
cation policy makers are prone to employing System 1 (which is fast, au-
tomatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic and sunconscious) when Sys-
tem 2 (which is slow, effortful, infrequent, calculating and conscious)
should be employed. According to Kahneman, our minds do not natu-
rally rely on logical, rational and critical thinking processes.
One of the most frequent biases teachers are faced with is confirma-
tion bias, which forces teachers to believe what they already think. Af-
ter years of practice it is easy to believe that what one has always done
is the right way of doing something. One real life example of confirma-
tion bias, combined with the status quo bias (the tendency to like things
to stay the same way) is the imperfect fine-tuning of Business English
courses at Slovenian business and economics higher education institu-
tions discussed by Rižnar (2009) that aimed exclusively at maintaining
the status quo.
Another example of confirmation bias is the one which makes teach-
ers look for evidence to support a theory and ignore evidence to the con-
trary. Teachers, too, love to be right, so they make sense of the world by
seeking patterns they are familiar with. This may explain why so many
teachers are keenly interested in one, and one only, method of teach-
ing, say, project work. While project work can certainly help students
learn certain things more effectively, it cannot be considered the only
method for teaching all subject matter for all courses taught.
Maybe some teachers (and considerably more education policy mak-
ers) are victims to Dunning-Kruger Effect, according to which the less
one knows, the more likely one is to perceive oneself as an expert, which
means that some people have illusory superiority, and some experts
have difficulties explaining how they do things because they assume
that what they do is easy or obvious to all. Many students at all levels
of education are familiar with the illusory superiority of some of their
teachers, who either fail to recognize their own lack of skills necessary
for effective teaching or fail to recognize genuine skill in their students.
The tendency to be overoptimistic and to overestimate favourable
and pleasing outcomes is called optimism bias. Although unrealistic op-
147
human beings. Following the work of Kahneman (2011) who writes in
his outstanding book Thinking, Fast and Slow that ‘as we navigate our
lives, we normally allow ourselves to be guided by impressions and feel-
ings, and the confidence we have in our intuitive beliefs and preferences
is usually, but not always, justified. We are often confident even when
we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our er-
rors than we are’ (p. 39), it is easy to believe that both teachers and edu-
cation policy makers are prone to employing System 1 (which is fast, au-
tomatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic and sunconscious) when Sys-
tem 2 (which is slow, effortful, infrequent, calculating and conscious)
should be employed. According to Kahneman, our minds do not natu-
rally rely on logical, rational and critical thinking processes.
One of the most frequent biases teachers are faced with is confirma-
tion bias, which forces teachers to believe what they already think. Af-
ter years of practice it is easy to believe that what one has always done
is the right way of doing something. One real life example of confirma-
tion bias, combined with the status quo bias (the tendency to like things
to stay the same way) is the imperfect fine-tuning of Business English
courses at Slovenian business and economics higher education institu-
tions discussed by Rižnar (2009) that aimed exclusively at maintaining
the status quo.
Another example of confirmation bias is the one which makes teach-
ers look for evidence to support a theory and ignore evidence to the con-
trary. Teachers, too, love to be right, so they make sense of the world by
seeking patterns they are familiar with. This may explain why so many
teachers are keenly interested in one, and one only, method of teach-
ing, say, project work. While project work can certainly help students
learn certain things more effectively, it cannot be considered the only
method for teaching all subject matter for all courses taught.
Maybe some teachers (and considerably more education policy mak-
ers) are victims to Dunning-Kruger Effect, according to which the less
one knows, the more likely one is to perceive oneself as an expert, which
means that some people have illusory superiority, and some experts
have difficulties explaining how they do things because they assume
that what they do is easy or obvious to all. Many students at all levels
of education are familiar with the illusory superiority of some of their
teachers, who either fail to recognize their own lack of skills necessary
for effective teaching or fail to recognize genuine skill in their students.
The tendency to be overoptimistic and to overestimate favourable
and pleasing outcomes is called optimism bias. Although unrealistic op-
147
