TOK Human Sciences. What are the human sciences? History Sociology Anthropology Psychology Economics...
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TOK Human Sciences
TOK Human Sciences. What are the human sciences? History Sociology Anthropology Psychology Economics And the social sciences of Humanities, Arts and political
What are the human sciences? History Sociology Anthropology
Psychology Economics And the social sciences of Humanities, Arts
and political sciences
Slide 3
Studying human beings, ways of knowing On your own, write
spaced apart: psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics,
political science Use your pen to join them and show
interconnections In groups: What does each one study? Do some of
them overlap in what they study? Are any of them subcategories of
others? What associations come to your mind for each of the human
sciences? Are there stereotypes that you can identify? Do you
consider there to be any significant omissions to the subjects in
this list? If you are studying human geography or business, for
example where would you place your subject? Is it a human science?
In what ways can all the sciences, both natural and human, tell us
something about human beings? What can they tell us, for example,
about our ways of know: sense perception, emotion, language, and
reasoning? Is it biology or psychology that can tell us more about
our emotions?
Slide 4
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING CLAIM To what extent do you accept it?
Effective investigation depends on the relationship between the
methods and the subject of the research. So interdependent are they
for the successful creation of knowledge that they cannot be
separated: tell me your methods, and I will tell you your subject
matter, tell me your subject matter, and I will tell you your
methods.
Slide 5
Biologist or Anthropologist You will be a Biologist or
Anthropologist. You will choose a specific behavior to observe
(biologist- natural science). The others will act as
anthropologists (human science) but will seek to observe and report
on a more ample range of behaviors Pay attention to how sense
perception, language, emotion and reasoning influence your
experiences and your findings
Slide 6
Paleoart Are human beings really all that different? South
Africa DrakensbergLascaux France http://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=-LZMaNNIDNM http://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=-LZMaNNIDNM
Caverns at lascaux
Slide 7
Paleoart USA and Brazil Head of Sinbad- Utah USA Rock Shelter
Furada Piaui region- Brazil
Slide 8
How do all these civilizations have such similar art, even
though they were separated by space and time ? Climbing man Dampier
Australia Petroglyphs Yinshan Mountains Inner Mongolia
Slide 9
IB questionnaire I.D. at least 10 flaws that make this
questionnaire and its following interpretation unlikely to gather
accurate info Imagine you graduated 10 years ago with your IB
diploma. A researcher, trying to find out about the impact of
international education, has decided to survey IB students of your
grad year, contacting those for whom their schools have up to date
contact info. You receive in the mail the following questionnaire
and, although you pick up your pen to fill it in, you quickly find
difficulties in answering. What problems do you face?
Slide 10
International Education Survey What percentage of your IB
education was international? Under the heading the influence of CAS
on your life you are asked 2 questions: How many hours a week have
you contributed to doing service within the past year? How much
money have you donated to international charities within the past
year? Rate, on the IB scale 1-7, how much more international your
outlook is, having take the IB, than it would have been if you had
not done so?
Slide 11
Interpretation of results/ problems Male graduates are more
generous than female graduates. They have donated 15% more to
charities in the past year than the women have. IB graduates
contribute on average 15 hours a week in doing service IB graduates
are 17.69% more international in their outlook than are graduates
of any other form of international education. (what advice would an
experienced human scientist give to the researcher who designed
this study, on each point? Problems with study The method for
gaining a sample of graduates The assumptions seemingly made The
choice of the particular questions to ask The language, such as
definitions The scales for eval The use of control group (your
alternative self) The likeliness of accuracy of memory in reporting
The likeliness of accurate answers as people report about
themselves The precision of the stats The consideration or not of
alt. explanations
Slide 12
ACTIVITY What do the following terms mean and what do they
illustrate about human sciences? Go through list together. If there
are terms no none knows, have individuals or pairs look them up and
explain them to the class: Validity, operational definition,
construct validity, triangulation Reliability Milgram
experiment/ethics codes Dependent/independent variable,
control/experimental group Hawthorne effect
Subject-expectancy/observer-expectancy effect Double-blind/triple
blind trials Placebo, nocebo Observation, verbal protocol,
self-report Participant observation, cross-cultural comparison
Cultural relativism Random/representative sampling Survey, census,
questionnaire, interview Qualitative/quantitative research
Experimental research, correlational study, case study,
longitudinal study
Slide 13
What are the implications of how we measure for the kinds of
conclusions we draw? How does our method of measuring poverty
affect the knowledge we gain? Quality and Quantity: How do we try
to quantify poverty? What do Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the
human development Index (HDI) measure and how do they measure it?
What are the implications of accepting each of the methods of
measurement, for world attitudes and potentially world decision
making?
Slide 14
METAPHORS AND DIPLOMA SUBJECTS From what subject does each term
come? What is the source of the metaphor? What is the target? Can
you suggest other examples from your studies? Does geography play a
role in providing raw material for the construction of metaphor?
Innate drive/ mRNA translation/ electric current Monetary
inflation/ Big Bang/ computer virus Concentration gradient/
punctuated equilibrium Computer hardware/ work done/ regime purge
System firewall/ natural selection/ cognitive dissonance
Netiquette/ price elasticity/ radioactive decay/ buffer solution
Great leap forward/ electrical resistance/ liberation front
Computer software/ greenhouse effect/ selfish gene Group pressure/
eukaryotic cell/ Trojan horse/ nitrogen fixation Lock and key
model/ network topology