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Re[2]: devil's advocate--more ramblings



Ok, I've had a rough week and I still have more to do by
tonight, even though it is Friday, but I can't stay out of
this any longer.

First, I would use a different classification system. About
5% of all students (independent of their major) can do well
in any introductory physics course. That is because those
people would do well in any course with or without a
teacher because they have successfully learned to teach
themselves. If the text or teacher is not appropriate for
their needs they will get what they need elsewhere. Not all
of these students become scientists or engineers. One of
the best students I ever saw in an introductory physics
class was from the school of agriculture. I have another
who is an english major. You can't break this down by
majors and non-majors. The other 95% benefit from
instruction. There will probably be some benefit from any
kind of instruction.

How do we determine how instruction helps students and what
kind of help do we settle for? If our students get jobs in
science and engineering, is that an indication that the
present form of instruction works? Maybe they learned what
they needed to know on the job after they were out of
school. Even if they get jobs because the instruction is
sufficient, does that mean that the instruction is a s good
as it can be? SHould we settle for mediocre if mediocre
gets them jobs? Why don't we go for the best. If that is
the case we need to determine good criteria for the best
instruction.

In research in physics education we cannot do neat
experiments with all variables controlled, like some of you
would like. But there is a lot of science in which that is
also the case. There are some experiments where you can
draw significant conclusions if you control one variable and
let everything else change. Not being able to control
variables does not mean that significant results cannot be
drawn from the research. If you look at a lot of research
in physics education you will find that classes taught with
materials developed based on physics education research do
consistently better on any type of assessment than those
that are not. Now these classes may have many different
teaching styles and vary in many different ways. But across
the board those students do better on any assessment. Some
of these courses are for "majors" and some of them are not.
The four criteria listed earlier by Dewey are necessary for
any student taking physics. The problem is that we tend to
focus on one or two of them, and a different one or two for
different classes.

The FCI might have problems, but no one has developed
anything better. (By the same argument "our students get
jobs", the FCI is then sufficient.) Please do. What is
subjective about the interactive vs. noninteractive
breakdown of the Hake plot?

One last thing, Physics by Inquiry and the tutorials by U.
Washington, Workshop Physics, the E&M text by CHabay and
Sherwood, .... are hardly watered down. Students who go
through these courses can outscore traditionally (meaning
courses not taught by materials based on research, not
labeled traditional by teaching method) taught students on
different forms of assessment that all instructors agree
their students should do reasonably well on. This happens
repeatedly. If you haven't tried some kind of comparison
assessment on your course, you should try it.

THe key does not lie in the instructor or the teaching
method. If you want to teach well, you have to understand
how students learn. You have to ask them how they are
thinking about the problem. Or you have to use the
materials developed based on research that does that. Other
methods can have positive results. Their are people who
have taught well in the past and continue to do so. Many
good teachers have some intuition about student
understanding and teach well becuase of that. I teach many
courses for which materials based on research have not been
developed. I do the best I can. Some students get a lot
out of it. I also know I can do better. I know what
research needs to be done to do that. (I also know that
right now I have very little time to do it.)

I guess i've said enough.

Beth