Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 12:38:41 -0500
From: David Emigh <emigh@COMMNET.EDU>
Subject: Inquiery based learning
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
X-To: ASTRO <astro@lists.mindspring.com>, skeptic <skeptic@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu>
Reply-to: emigh@commnet.edu
Organization: QVCTC
I am posting this to several lists and I know that many of
you are in all three and I hope you do not mind the cross
posting too much. This is actually related to the
planetaria notes on the astro-list.
A week or two ago I got up with my daughter (5:30 in the
morning) and while she got ready for school I watched a
"Teacher to Teacher" program on Nick. The show was hosted
by Don Herbert (sp?) (Mr. Wizard). It was on an "inquiry
based learning" experience to learn stuff about wind. It
gave one teacher's experience with this particular
curriculum. The show was obviously designed to praise this
form of learning science, but all I saw was a bunch of
second graders wasting a couple of hours to learn that wind
blows, that it is all caused by hot air rising, and that if
you give a young kid a glass of water and a straw and tell
him to blow on the water you get a mess.
Inquiry based learning is designed, I believe, to let kids
explore nature with a little guidance (actually very little
if what I saw was correct) and come to their own conclusions
(sort of). Does anyone know more on this and are you as
appalled as I am? If not, what are the genuine strengths of
this system (no edubabble please)? I am getting bright
students in my college classes who have absolutely no
science background what-so-ever. Almost all of the finger
pointed around here goes to the middle schools (the local
bastions of esteem education), but I wonder if their
elementary school science education is blown on hours
wasting learning lite.
David Emigh
My take on this is based on a couple of assumptions:
1. Students need to know some of the physical laws that
are believed to control the universe we live in.
2. They are unlikely to learn much about these physical
laws by sitting around and blowing air from a soda
straw into a glass of water.
3. The reason we read Kepler, Newton, Bohr, and Einstein
is that we are unlikely to discover their insights by
sitting around a table and saying, "Let's
talk about motion." WBN
Barlow Newbolt
Department of Physics and Engineering
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450
There is something fascinating about science. One
gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of
such trifling investments of fact.
Mark Twain
Telephone and Phone Mail: 540-463-8881
Fax: 540-463-8884
e-mail: NewboltW@madison.acad.wlu.edu