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re: a slightly . . .

Samual Johnson (originator of one of the first English dictionaries) once
said something like: "There are two kinds of knowledge, that which I know,
and that which I know where to find."

Seems to me one way to divide up material in a course is along those lines.
For example I expect my students to have only passing knowledge of circular
motion; we do a couple labs and some very superficial plug and chug type
problems in a very short time span (with the exception of angular momentum
which we do spend some time on). If they need it later in life I doubt they
will remember much except that they saw it in a physics class. That's fine,
they at least know where to look it up.

I treat Newton's laws, the laws of thermodynamics, and some other things
much more in detail and expect that students probably won't have to review
much to understand an application they encounter later on in life dealing
with these concepts. Hopefully they "know" these concepts in Johnson's
first sense.

kyle

I rather like what Roger wrote regarding this topic and agree. I also agree
with the comments of Rick, concerning the holy grail of development of
conceptual understanding in the high schools.

Beth wrote

I agree with Roger that forcing a depth vs. breadth choice
might not be the way to ask the question, but I'll comment
> anyway.

I didn't mean to be posing the question as an either/or question; to my mind
depth vs. breadth is a continuum not at binary state system. We all
ultimately have to make a choice of where on the continuum to teach our
courses taking into account factors like, what will the next instructor
expect the students to have seen, what the students future profession will
have expected them to have seen, time available to cover topics, background
of students, our own position philosophically regarding this issue (which
naturally brings in factors that Dewey thinks about) etc etc

Joel

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! Natural Science Division !
! Indiana University Southeast !
! New Albany, IN 47150 !
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