Leave it to Fleener--H&P #5

Can it really be that another three weeks has already flown by?  I don't know about anyone else, but my March has been crazy.  Between daylight savings time, spring break, Easter break, and Easter being one right after the other, I'm ready for a new month!  

I keep getting questions about how I'm doing.  It's hard to say.  I feel well, almost like nothing has ever been wrong.  My hair is growing back, and I get compliments each day about how well it's coming back.  

"It's growing back so well!"

"Your hair looks so good!"

"How is it growing so quickly?"

"It's not curly! My so-and-so's hair grew in SO curly after chemo!"

I don't really know what else to say, but that we are doing well.  I am tired, I still have pain, and I have a few minor reactions to my cancer-fighting drugs, but as long as they are still fighting-cancer, we plow forward.  Day by day, week by week, I get a little stronger and my hair gets a little longer.  (here's proof!)  

I recently read an article that perfectly described my new normal now.  It explained how having cancer puts a dark cloud over your head that never goes away.  That got me thinking: sure, it's not always stormy or pouring rain, but the cancer cloud is always there.  Something a person without q cancer cloud might find "normal" could be a red flag for someone standing under the cloud of cancer.  No sore muscle, sore throat, or other pain can be simply brushed aside anymore.  Being strong or tough or pushing through is not an option now.  I can't ever just forget about something anymore because that something that might easily be forgotten in someone else's mind could potentially be cancer rearing its ugly head again for me.  

However, just because this dark cloud is overhead, that doesn't mean the sun isn't shining.  The cloud is there, but not so close that that it clouds my view.   There are patches of blue skies and even rainbows now and then.   It's not raining now, even if the forecast tells of possible storms ahead. I'm carrying an umbrella, but have not needed to pull it out for weeks.  Perhaps those weeks will turn into months and years, but I'm prepared if they don't. That's my new normal now: living with the dark cloud of cancer hovering over my head, but trying to see beyond to sunny skies over the horizon and being thankful that it is simply overcast, not pouring rain.

Again, I am reminded of the "mists of darkness" described in the story of the Tree of Life (see 1 Ne 8 & 12).

And the mists of darkness are the temptations of the devil, which blindeth the eyes, and hardeneth the hearts of the children of men, and leadeth them away into broad roads, that they perish and are lost. (1 Ne 12: 17)

Cancer is not the only condition that bring along a permanent dark cloud. 

There are other terminal diseases that hang dark clouds overhead.    

Clouds of addiction linger long after the behavior has ceased.

Anxiety and depression can form together stormy skies.  

Broken hearts, betrayal, and great loss leave storms in their path.  

Each of us must overcome some dark clouds of life.  Some dispel quickly; others linger over a lifetime.  

Dark clouds in life do not always forecast a life full of darkness.    There is hope; there is help:  

...I also beheld a strait and narrow path, which came along by the rod of iron, even to the tree by which I stood...And I saw numberless concourses of people, many of whom were pressing forward, that they might obtain the path which led unto the tree by which I stood....and they came forth and caught hold of the end of the rod of iron; and they did press forward through the mist of darkness, clinging to the rod of iron...(see 1 Nephi 8:20-24, emphasis added).

As I was reading this last night with my children, it occurred to me that I had never before paid attention to what seems to be "normal" life for the majority of us.  We are pressing forward, trying JUST TO GET ON THE RIGHT PATH!! Enduring life's ups and downs and learning step-by-step are ways to be pressing forward, enduring, that we "might obtain the path," the correct path.  It seems once a person has found what's right, has made it to the truth, or "caught hold of the end of the rod," then BAM!, there arises "a mist of darkness."  

Most of life is filled with simply pressing forward, trying to blaze a trail through the dark clouds, hoping that the path is still the right path, praying that there is light beyond the fog.  All the while, those who have made it through are cheering us forward, hoping we will learn from their mistakes, that our time in the darkness might be easier than theirs.  We are promised that God loves us and His light is shining beyond the clouds, and we can feel the warmth of his love if we just hold on and press on.  But how do you know this is true if you can never see beyond the storms of life? Just how DO you develop that kind of faith????  How DOES one learn not to question God's love every time another door slams shut or another painful or frightening event comes your way?  

That is the great question of life; the one science is eager to prove, the one faith argues that the answer has already been given, and we must simply believe and keep moving forward.  Life presses on, the sun rises each day, even if all we can see is clouds.  How much better the view if we have the faith to see the light in spite of the storms.             

Any number of mists of darkness are constantly before us in mortality, and it might be difficult to overcome or to hope for the sun to ever shine again.  

However, the promise of the Easter season tells that even when it seems as if the sun refuses to shine, the SON will always be the light and the life that can overcome any clouds of darkness.  When storms hang low over the length of mortality, the hope of new day, a new life rises just over the horizon because of Him.  When our faith, our hope, and the reason for our love is placed in Christ, no dark cloud will ever dark enough to block all the light from life.  

Learning by heart may not be best for your mind

by Alfonso Echazarra

Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills????

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PISA 2012 Released Mathematics Item (Proficiency Level 6)

Some of the greatest geniuses had remarkable memories. Mozart, according to legend, sat and listened to Allegri�s �Miserere�, then transcribed the piece of music, entirely from memory, later in the day. Kim Peek, the savant who was the inspiration for the blockbuster film, Rain Man, memorised as many as 12 000 books. But unlike Mozart, who composed more than 600 works during his brief life, Peek was unable to distinguish between the relevant and the irrelevant, or discover hidden meanings and metaphors in the texts he had committed to memory.

What do these stories have to do with learning mathematics? Or, put another way: in light of these stories, how would you encourage students to learn mathematics? By understanding what mathematics concepts, procedures and formulae mean and applying them to a lot of different maths problems set in a lot of different contexts? Or by learning them by heart and applying them to a lot of similar maths problems? Sooner or later, the method matters. Students who avoid making an effort to understand mathematics concepts may succeed in some school environments; but a lack of deep, critical and creative thinking may seriously penalise these students later in life when confronted with real, complex problems. As Albert Einstein provocatively said: �Any fool can know; the point is to understand�.

A similar message is relayed in this month�s PISA in Focus and a new OECD paper on education, �How teachers teach and students learn: Successful strategies for school�. The analyses show that students who mainly use memorisation when they study do well on easy questions. For example, �CHARTS Q1�, a multiple-choice question from the PISA 2012 test, refers to a simple bar chart and is considered one of the easiest questions in the mathematics assessment. Some 87% of students answered this question correctly. Students who reported that they use some type of memorisation strategy when they study mathematics, such as learning by heart, recalling work already done or going through examples again and again, had about the same success rate on this easy item as students who reported using other learning strategies.

But complex problems are a different matter; they require more than a good memory. For the most challenging question from the PISA 2012 mathematics test, �REVOLVING DOOR Q2�, students who reported using mainly memorisation strategies were much less likely than students using other strategies, such as connecting ideas or working out exactly what is important to learn, to answer correctly. Answering �REVOLVING DOOR Q2� correctly requires substantial geometric reasoning and creativity, involves multiple steps, and draws heavily on students� ability to translate a real situation into a mathematical problem. Only 3% of participants answered this question correctly.

The findings also show that, contrary to received wisdom, East Asian students are not necessarily the ones who use memorisation strategies the most. Memorisation is used almost everywhere, but fewer 15-year-olds in Hong Kong-China, Japan, Korea, Macao-China, Shanghai-China, Chinese Taipei and Viet Nam reported using it than students in, let�s say, English-speaking countries to whom they are often compared. For instance, 5% of students in Viet Nam, 12% of students in Japan and 17% of students in Korea reported that they learn as much as they can by heart when they study mathematics, compared to 26% of students in Canada, 28% in Ireland, 29% in the United States, 35% in Australia and New Zealand, and 37% in the United Kingdom.

In some situations, memorisation is useful, even necessary. It can give students enough concrete facts on which to reflect; it can limit anxiety by reducing mathematics to a set of simple facts, rules and procedures; and it can help to develop fluency with numbers early in a child�s development, before the child is asked to tackle more complex problems. But to perform at the very top, 15-year-olds need to learn mathematics in a more reflective, ambitious and creative way � one that involves exploring alternative ways of finding solutions, making connections, adopting different perspectives and looking for meaning. So yes, you can use your memory; just use it strategically, lest Einstein call you a fool.

Links:
PISA in Focus No. 61: Is memorisation a good strategy for learning mathematics? by Alfonso Echazarra
PISA � la loupe No. 61: La m�morisation : Une strat�gie payante pour l�apprentissage des math�matiques?
How teachers teach and students learn: Successful strategies for school.
PISA Try the Test: Explore PISA 2012 Mathematics, problem solving and financial literacy test question
Source: PISA 2012 Released Mathematics Items

Is international academic migration stimulating scientific research and innovation?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Higher education and academic research are among the most rapidly globalising systems. Today, around 5 million students study and do research in a country other than their own, attracted by the quality of overseas universities and willing to complement their education portfolio with international experience. Employers generally value the impact international education has on the skills and mind-set of graduates, and see international experience as indispensable for future global leaders.

But in an age when governments are increasingly concerned about rising levels of migration and are making their migration policies more stringent, international student mobility is also being scrutinised. Some countries impose stricter visa requirements or limitations on the time for international students to stay in the country. Others make it more difficult for graduates to stay and work in the country where they have studied. The prospect of losing the economic returns from international students and the income provided by fee-paying students does not seem to dissuade some governments from imposing stricter regulations on international students.

The recent Education Indicators in Focus brief looks in more detail at the international mobility of master�s and doctoral students. The mobility of doctoral students is of special concern because of its relevance to research policy. The chart above illustrates the close relationship between the number of international doctoral students in a country and the country�s commitment to research, as measured by spending on R&D in tertiary education. Countries with a large share of international doctoral students are also countries that invest a lot in research.

The chart does not suggest any causality. In fact, there are two ways to interpret the relationship. Countries with relatively high levels of investment in university research are probably well-integrated in global research networks. International collaboration naturally leads to an exchange of researchers. Favourable research climates, high levels of investment and the prospect of collaborating with researchers working at the cutting edge in their fields offer attractive opportunities for young doctoral researchers.

The global research landscape is diversifying. Next to the academic centres in the United States and the United Kingdom, new strongholds of global academic research are emerging in countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden. These countries have opened up their universities for international researchers, and now 30%, 40% or even more than 50% of the doctoral students in these countries are of foreign origin.

But it could very well be that the causality also works in the other direction. Higher numbers of international researchers probably contribute to the global competiveness of academic research by strengthening integration in research networks or by facilitating international knowledge transfer. We can find support for this hypothesis in comparing our data on the percentage of international doctoral students with OECD data on the share of publications in the top 10% academic journals. The strong country-level correlation between both sets of data suggests that doctoral students have a positive impact on the quantity and quality of scientific research in the host country. In turn, this could prompt governments to increase their R&D spending on universities. Indirectly, international students then contribute to the innovation process and the development of a research-intensive knowledge economy in the host country.

The case of Switzerland is telling. A small country in the heart of Europe that is now fiercely debating migration policy, Switzerland has opened up its universities to international researchers and doctoral students, while at the same time increasing its R&D investment. Anyone who looks at international rankings has noticed that Switzerland is rising rapidly up the global academic hierarchy. Sweden and the Netherlands are close behind. This is no coincidence.

Current debates about international student mobility tend to overemphasise the benefits for the individual student or the financial returns for the host institution or host country. But it is also important to look into the wider benefits of academic migration. Laboratories and research centres at the frontier of their fields cannot do without strong integration in global networks and without international researchers. Progress in scientific research happens by sharing and confronting ideas, questioning established wisdom and looking at the world from different perspectives. International exchange and mobility of doctoral researchers is absolutely critical to this. Countries that curtail academic mobility risk paying a high price.

Links:
The internationalisation of doctoral and master's studies, Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 39, by Gabriele Marconi.
L�internationalisation des �tudes de doctorat et de master, Les indicateurs de l'�ducation � la loupe, issue No. 39 (French Version).

Graph sources: OECD Education Database, http://stats.oecd.org/, (accessed 21 January 2016), and OECD (2015a), Education at a Glance 2015: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2015-en, Table B1.2.

Leave it to Fleener--H&P #4

Hawking Hope

When Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease) in 1963, he was only given about two years to live.  Today, At 74 years old, Dr. Hawking is not only living, but continues his work of attempting to understand and explain the universe.  How has this brilliant man continued to thrive, even after a bleak diagnosis at a young age and the deterioration of his physical abilities over time?  How has he not given up on life?
In his own words, he explains a small piece of his motivation:

"Before my condition was diagnosed, I had been very bored with life," he said. "There had not seemed to be anything worth doing."  

Fueled by the possibility of an early death, Stephen poured himself into research and into reaching his goals.  His diagnosis, it seems, actually led to him rising to higher grounds and becoming the acclaimed scientist he is today.  He quickly discovered his purpose and had hope that he would be able to accomplish his goals.

In addition to research, discovery, and professional goals, there were two major events that helped keep Stephen from the despair that could have easily taken over.  While spending time in the hospital before his original diagnosis, he shared a room with a leukemia patient.  Witnessing the hardships faced by this roommate caused Stephen to reflect on his own situation and to view it as more tolerable.  Additionally, at the time of diagnosis, Stephen was falling in love.  The resulting marriage and family gave Stephen him a purpose beyond himself, personal reasons to press forward.

I thought of Stephen's story as I was reading this week when I came across a definition of faith:

 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

With intelligence, Hawkings has sought to explain and understand the universe, but his hope is not based on faith in Christ.  Although he--at one point-- supported the theory that the universe has a Creator, he now seeks to use science to disprove his own work.  Hawking has faith and hope for things not seen, but does no center that faith on the true source of light and truth.

If only all the world could grasp the power of hope once you hold fast to faith in Christ!  Belief in the Savior of the world is one that can anchor souls and make it possible to stay "sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God." (see Ether 12:4).  Hawking's life is so close to this pattern!  The simple fact that he has endured the challenges he has been given is nothing short of miraculous.  Beyond simply existing, he amazingly continues to share his talents with others, seemingly with faith that someday he will be able to unlock mysteries of the universe.  In his search to explain the great unknown, however, he seeks to prove that God was not involved.  Even though he seems to be missing this most important piece, there must be a reason why Hawking has beaten the odds and defied the boundaries of his illness.  His life truly has been filled with miracles.

As I learned more of Dr. Hawking's story in the last few weeks, I could not help but see parallels in my own story.  I have also been given a death sentence of only a few years.  However, I continue to fight and to hope for a miracle.  Some days this hope seems lost, as the realist in me keeps waiting for cancer to return.  When this dread of falling out of remission consumes me, I have to remind myself that God is a God of miracles, and miracles have not ceased. (see Mormon 9: 11-19, Moroni 7:29).  Both large and small miracles can happen every day, and I will be more likely to recognize and reach for them through HOPE.  And what shall I hope for?

...Ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.  Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope. (Mor 7:41-42).

Both hope and faith have been essential in my battle with cancer.  Hope provides energy to press on.  Hope brings peace to the soul.  I have been able to make the most of each day I have been given through hope.  This quality, along with faith in prayer, in God's plan for me, and in the belief that He can use me to show that miracles have not ceased have given me purpose.  I have already received the amazing miraculous gift of grace, and everyday I stay in remission is a bonus and a sign of His goodness and mercy.

What comes next after being blessed with miracles after the trials of my faith?  There is one quality that seems to come hand in hand with hope and faith in the scriptures: charity.  (see 1 Cor. 13:13, Moroni 10:20-21,  D&C 4:5, 6:19, 18:19).  Charity, the pure love of Christ, is the next step to becoming who God wants us to be.  I have been given a little more time on this earth, but all the time in the world would be of little value if I did not spend it in loving and serving others.  If I "have not charity, [I am] nothing."  (see Moroni 7:44).

And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. (Moroni 7: 45)

Though hope, faith, and charity, I can continue to seek for miracles, and in the meantime, endure all things that come my way.  Hawking's life story serves as an example of hope and a determination to never give up, despite challenges.  I can take that inspiration further by putting faith and trust in God, who continues to be a God of miracles and can bless me to use my talents to bring His light into the lives of others.