| Chronology | Current Month | Current Thread | Current Date |
| [Year List] [Month List (current year)] | [Date Index] [Thread Index] | [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] | [Date Prev] [Date Next] |
At 12:22 PM +1200 10/9/97, Derek Chirnside wrote:*****************************************************************************
flightThere were some places and teachers who did turn out lots of top
quantumstudents. Rutherford and Thomson did, and many of the early
thetheorists in Germany did.Yes, but we should question closely whether it was the place or
andteacher that "turns them out". Cambridge (both of them) attracts
reasonableaccepts the brightest--it is not surprising, if they can do a
brilliancejob of admissions, that they turn out the best. Brilliance in,
far as Iout!
Whether the *teaching* makes any difference is totally unknown, so
othercan see. For all we know, being there and spending time with the
compensate forbrightest students in the country, perhaps the world, may
Gottingen andthe negative effects of the teaching! The same may hold for
traineeHeidelberg in their prime, as for Padua in the sixteenth century.
As a side comment, there is a debate in this country on 'What is a
good teacher?' and how to use criteria to relate to salary
increments. One Politically right wing term is 'value added'. How
to judge this with a teacher and use it to reward good teachers and
weed out the not so good.
The issue is fraught with peril. A comment from a 22 year old
teacher to me about a collegue of mine in another time and another
place.
"I learned more in (person X's) classroom, since he was away so much
dealing with (extra-curricular activity) that we had to get on and
learn on our own. I really learned how to study"
This interpreted ment 'I got the past papers, got the study notes and
did what I had to do to pass'
Here they now produce league tables of schools pass rates and means
in public exams.
Private schools are then compared to public schools in a lower
soioeconomic part of town (and there are numerical indicators to
determine this) quite uncritically by the public.
'Brilliance' in research is a different issue to success in exams as
well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Derek--
Derek Chirnside, Physics Department, Shirley Boys High School.
PO Box 27 025, Christchurch 8001, New Zealand.
chirnsided@mars.shirley.school.nz
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree completely on both issues! I think it is extremely difficult
to
measure "value added" in teaching, because you have to measure value
before
and after, and you have to have some agreed on measure of value!!!
But*************************************************************************
even though it is fraught with peril, we need to address it because it
is
of immediate relevance to the rewards for teachers and, longer term,
for
the possibility of improving teaching.
I should confess that, as a philosopher at a university, my interest
is
very real but it has no practical consequences for me. But I would
like to
aid and abet the concerned secondary science teachers.
As to brilliance, at Rice we only admit highly qualified students, but
there is a fairly clear bimodal distribution. Most are quite able,
have
good study habits, do the homework, take tests well, get good grades.
A
smaller number are "different", often have poor study habits, don't do
the
homeowrk because it is boring, raise objections to test questions, and
often get mediocre grades. Most of them will never produce anything
of
consequence because of their poor work habits, disorganization,
indifference to social consequences, etc.
ORIGINAL contributions, if any, will come from a small subset of thisseminars at Rice and am on the philosophy dept. mailing list. Perhaps we
minority.*****Whoops, you are a little ahead of me. I agree. I go to
Richard Grandy
Philosophy & Cognitive Sciences
Rice University