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Re: Ideocosmology




-----Original Message-----
From: scott johnston <johnston@kigateway.kin.on.net>

Over the last few years I have been experimenting with a locally developed
approach which continues to show some promise.
The system is called conceptual mediation. The basis of it is that students
hanging on to "alternative concepts" (like when you take air out of a room
things become weightless) do so because of an innate process of mental
protection, in the jargon of the field it is called proactive inhibition.


As the years pass and more and more debate rages over physics instruction,
I'm becoming more and more convinced that the problem is not the way in
which physics is taught, but rather the way that the majority of students
'learn'. Now that statement itself is right in keeping with current
educational 'movements'. However, let me suggest that the solution is to
teach students to 'learn' in a more honest, more intellectual mode. It
strikes me that students who revert to Aristilean descriptions after
instruction in Newtonian physics are being intellectually dishonest. That
is, they really haven't engaged their brain in a rational consideration of
the material they've been presented and therefore feel free to reject the
demonstrably 'more correct' descriptions for their 'more comfortable' ones.
Sure we can do the thinking for them in highly structured study activities
which can force them to confront the logical inconsistencies between old and
new descriptions of nature, but such approaches are inherently inefficient
and it remains to be seen if the techniques really change student's 'study'
approach such that these new skills are transferable across physics topics
and more importantly across academic disciplines.

What I am suggesting is that what might be more beneficial than new
techniques in physics instruction are new techniques in training young
people HOW to study in general and HOW to learn new things. We might,
heaven forbid, have to defer to the educational psychologists for this.
Just perhaps some well timed (not too early--age of reason and all that
crap--and not too late--serious learning needs to begin as early as
possible) training along these lines could improve the entire educational
process such that our physics students are prepared to question, to examine,
to test their ideas against those of Newton, Einstein, Feynman, and the
rest. We might get students who are willing and able to put in efficient
study time outside the confines of the structured classroom (rather than
thinking that memorizing the notes is equivalent to study) and we as
instructors wouldn't be placed in the current situation where we're damned
if we spend too much time developing depth of understanding in a few areas
because we cover too little content, or damned if we cover the content
without developing enough depth of understanding.

just ramblings,

rick