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Re: what is understanding

Students are expected to understand physics. But what is understanding?
It is state of mind, with respect to a topic or a set of topics. ...

UNDERSTANDING is attended when a student can confront a novel situation
and validly discuss it (at length) with an expert.

I did not understand your message. In particular I did not understand
the meaning of "state of mind", "attended", "novel", "validly discuss"
and "expert".
.......................................................................

If understanding is not a state of mind then what is it?
Students of physics are expected to develop that state of mind in the
process of self-explanation based on what they observe, do, read about,
etc. Can this process be imposed by force? Or should we, teachers, wait
for it to occur spontaneously?
Ludwik Kowalski

P.S. The term "wait" means "teach without blaiming ourselves for the
lack of understanding".
......................................................................
If my own experience is any indication, understanding came very late in the
process. Much of what I now understand about physics I gained after I
started teaching. Perhaps understanding is more than we should reasonably
expect of students, esp. at the introductory level. A successful teacher
friend of mine, Pat Canaan of Corvallis, OR, has, for many years held that
students should learn how to solve the problems first, understanding will
come later. While I don't teach based on that proposition, I often think
that I ought to. Every year, it seems to me that I end up understanding
more new things than my students ever do, and maybe that is the way it
should be.

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Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@odie.ncssm.edu>
(please reply to this address rather than the originating address)

Instructor of Physics, NC School of Science and Mathematics
P. O. Box 2418, Durham, NC 27715
(919) 286-3366

The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better." So I bought a Macintosh.
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