PISA 2009 Mathematics Framework

My Perfume Doubles As Mace

A boy sprawled next to me on the bus, elbows out, knee pointing sharp into my thigh.
He frowned at me when I uncrossed my legs, unfolded my hands
and splayed out like boys are taught to: all big, loose limbs.
I made sure to jab him in the side with my pretty little sharp purse.
At first he opened his mouth like I expected him to, but instead of speaking up he sat there, quiet, and took it for the whole bus ride.
Like a girl.

Once, a boy said my anger was cute, and he laughed,
and I remember thinking that I should sit there and take it,
because it isn’t ladylike to cause a scene and girls aren’t supposed to raise their voices.
But then he laughed again and all I saw
was my pretty little sharp nails digging into his cheek
before drawing back and making a horribly unladylike fist.
(my teacher informed me later that there is no ladylike way of making a fist.)

When we were both in the principal’s office twenty minutes later
him with a bloody mouth and cheek, me with skinned knuckles,
I tried to explain in words that I didn’t have yet
that I was tired of having my emotions not taken seriously
just because I’m a girl.

Girls are taught: be small, so boys can be big.
Don’t take up any more space than absolutely necessary.
Be small and smooth with soft edges
and hold in the howling when they touch you and it hurts:
the sandpaper scrape of their body hair that we would be shamed for having,
the greedy hands that press too hard and too often take without asking permission.

Girls are taught: be quiet and unimposing and oh so small
when they heckle you with their big voices from the window of a car,
because it’s rude to scream curse words back at them, and they’d just laugh anyway.
We’re taught to pin on smiles for the boys who jeer at us on the street
who see us as convenient bodies instead of people.

Girls are taught: hush, be hairless and small and soft,
so we sit there and take it and hold in the howling,
pretend to be obedient lapdogs instead of the wolves we are.
We pin pretty little sharp smiles on our faces instead of opening our mouths,
because if we do we get accused of silly women emotions
blowing everything out of proportion with our PMS, we get
condescending pet names and not-so-discreet eyerolls.

Once, I got told I punched like a girl.
I told him, Good. I hope my pretty little sharp rings leave scars.



by: theapplepielifestyle

Reflective Judgment: Concepts of Justification and Their Relationship to Age and Education

Kitchener & King

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is the most referred to when it comes reasoning ability, but there is little discussion about the development of reasoning ability beyond adolescence. In 1977, King and Kitchener develop a seven-stage model of post-adolescent reasoning styles which is called “Reflective Judgment.” This model outlines the process of how a person’s reasoning ability develops over time, spread out in 7 sequential stages. Each stage represents different assumption of knowledge and reality, and how it affects the justification of beliefs. Lower stages are characterized by immense, unexamined dependence on an authority figure, and this develops into higher stages in term of its complexity, comprehensiveness, and ability to consciously reflect on one’s own beliefs. 

An initial test of this model was conducted previous to this study, employing a series of pilot interviews to 18 subjects between 18 and 35 years old. Each subject was presented a problem revolving around 6 intellectual topics, including scientific, religious and historical issues. They then proceed to give their opinions and defend it. The result of this initial study is 1) subjects’ responses could be scored at each of these 7 stages, and 2) older subjects score at higher stages that did younger ones. It was then followed by this study, which is intended to find out whether or not relative judgment is related to age and education, and if so, to what this differences might be accounted for.  To find out about the second question, four additional factors which are related to intellectual development were also tested. These factors are verbal ability, formal operation, socio-economic status and verbal fluency.

There are 60 subjects; 20 high school students, 20 college freshman and 20 graduate students, half of them are male and half of them are female. Each subject was tested on the five variables mentioned above.  The result for reflective judgment was that highschool students mainly scored between 2 and 4, college students scored between 2.5 and 5.5, and graduate students put themselves between 4 and 7. 

For the other 4 factors, meaningful differences between groups were found for verbal ability, socio-economic status and word count, while for formal operation, all groups were found to be more or less on the same level. To find out whether or not these differences are contributing factor to reflective judgment, analysis of covariance was then run with verbal ability, socio-economic status and word count act as covariate (held constant). Aside from verbal ability, for which the result for highschool and college students were almost equal, the result for the other groups on each covariates still shows significant differences. It was then followed by analysis of covariance for combining covariates, for which the result was more or less the same. 

The result for this study therefore can be concluded.  Reflective judgment is related to age and educational level; older and more educated individual tend to have a more complex and sophisticated way in justifying belief than their younger, less educated individual. This cannot be statistically accounted to the other factors related to intellectual development; even though verbal ability was found to be closely related to reflective judgment, differences of reflective judgment’s scores between groups cannot be solely accounted to this factor. It will be the task of future researcher to find out whether or not this is a result of uncovered, confounding trait, or that those variables merely covary within given population. 

Considering this is a study that judge, compares and rank people in term of their justification of belief, the information in this paper was presented very well without being insulting. Regarding the methods itself, the author did a quite extensive explanation on how the study is done, although more information is needed on the scoring protocol. However the sampling procedure creates a room for a debate since the age and education factors are confounded. It is questionable whether or not age and education affect it separately. To find out about that, the study will have to gather sampling which includes subjects in all age, in every educational level.  Unless the age limit of the subjects is set to be older, the study must include 18 years old graduate students, which is not impossible but the sample will not be statistically reliable. The author itself also provided explanation on why the confounding age and educational level are still reliable.

Further and more detailed information regarding this topic is provided in a presentation below.

Kitchener, K. S., & King, P. M. (1981). Reflective judgment: Concepts of justification and their relationship to age and education. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2, 89-116.

 

Bonjour, Brussels

Brussels is my first international travel, which is the reason I messed up so bad. I mean, I did travel from Indonesia to Netherland but that was funded and planned by dependable people who know what they are doing. I was like, ok let's try doing it this way or that way, and if it didn't work out, screw it. 

If you are travelling in Europe and you made your planning well, you can do it really cheaply actually. Now, by no means I am an expert in travelling whatsoever, but I did my fair share of searching and people can learn from my failure. There is this thing called Eurail pass, which let you travel by train through countries you are interested in for a selected time period, but it is mostly aimed at traveller residing outside of Europe. There are also Eurolines, which is travelling by bus and can get as cheap as €9, but you have to order it 15 days in advance. 

I did not use the two options I mentioned above, because 1) I decided to go only a week before, and 2) I was too lazy to read everything and man those passes do have a lot of requirements. It is not actual travelling anyway, there is this religious event I had to attend in Belgie. So I decided to use the regular train. You can order the ticket online, buy it at the counter or at the ticket machine. It is way cheaper to buy it at the machine than the counter though, especially if you have OV-chipkaart. Me, I don't have personal OV-chipkaart yet at the time so I decided to just buy it online. It cost me €23 for a one-way trip. Meh. 

I departed from Utrecht Centraal station and arrived at Brussels-South railway station in ... 3 hours? It was quite fast, and roomy. There are so few people on the train, unlike Indonesian trains. But Indonesian trains have electrical plugs you can use for free so I guess 1-1. 

Now, Brussels. Where do I start? The station I arrived at, Brussels-South, is the biggest railway station in Belgium and primarily handles international traffic. In Dutch, its called Brussel-Zuid, but in French its called Bruxelles-Midi. Why does everything in France sound prettier? Anyway, people only speak Dutch at the parts of Belgium neighboring Netherlands and by the time I arrived in Brussels everyone is already speaking French, not that it made any difference. I liked how exotic my surrounding sounded, but it was difficult because I suck at pronouncing French words and I ended up bringing notebook everywhere since I didn't want to get lost for pronouncing a place's name wrong.

I planned to rent a room in a youth hostel I searched on the internet, it was supposed to be much cheaper that way, but my boots were killing me and I was to tired to figure out how to get there, so I just rent a room in a hotel near the station instead. Don't ask me the price. But the room was nice and I need a good place to finish my assignments though so yay. 

That was the fish and chips I bought for dinner, and the portion was so big it lasted until breakfast. I got like a tray of it for €5. I flirted with the guy selling it (what even) and the owner of the hotel said next time I went to Belgium with a guy she will give me a nice room with private shower so I can 'have fun'. Ha ha. The chocolate there are really expensive, or maybe because I checked out the wrong place.  But the bakery was exceptionally excellent. Even croissants I bought at convenient store tasted like heaven. 

And yes, I brought my assignments. Mind you it was not holidays - I had loads of assignment and if it was not for this event I won't even consider going outside of my bedroom. 

The next day, I departed from Bruxelles-Midi to Cambron Casteau. I had to change train halfway and almost got on the wrong train, but fortunately I met a nice lady (who weirdly enough can speak English since I was at the middle-of-nowhere part of Belgium) who let me know about it. The train ride was probably the most beautiful I've ever experienced in my life - from Utrecht to Brussels it was mostly urban areas, but from Brussels to Cambron it was beautiful farm and meadow and hills and ... gosh, it was so pretty.

Cambron Casteau is a station in the province of Brugellete. I was going to Pairi Daiza, a big botanical garden located in Brugellete, for that event I was talking about. From Cambron Casteau I can just walk to the garden. I was wearing my traditional outfit for the day and people were looking at me like I was lost, but I was too happy to care.

Pairi Daiza itself is usually closed in winter, but they open just for us. There is a big Balinese Hindu temple located in the middle of it, where European Balinese Hindu usually gather and held their religious event. It was nice meeting people from my homeland, and I got free food.

 

Later that afernoon, I went back to Brussels. I spend the evening, the night and the next morning doing assignment (how lame can I be), but in the afternoon I gave up and decided to explore the city .. as far as my useless boots allowed me to. I found a castle and ate more croissant, but sadly didn;t get the chance to visit Maneken Piss or the Notre Dame. 

Maybe next time. 

Then I went back to Utrecht. I was addicted to Lily Allen's Somewhere Only We Know at the time, so I listened  to it repeatedly. Imagine sitting at the train by yourself, watching the scenery passing by, listening to that song - I felt like I'm supposed to cry but I don't know what to cry about. *sigh* First world problem, everyone. 

The second time I went to Brussels was not that exciting since I hitchhiked halfway through with a friend and I was only there for a day, but the experience in the city beat it all. 

 

Bet the people of Brussels never expect they will witness this ritual held at the very front of their houses. 

Note for self: MAKE A BETTER PLANNING NEXT TIME.