Re: piles of stones (was derivations)

["Daniel L. MacIsaac" <Dan.MacIsaac@NAU.EDU>]

> Point well taken, John. There is always this problem of "breadth vs.
> depth" when we teach physics. What the tragedy is, is that we all
> seem to be in a position that we have to start over every year--only

Hugh, if you believe the TIMSS (3rd Intl Math & Sci Study), there is NO
remaining debate on depth vs breadth in US grade school instruction,
the US leads the world in breadth by a long shot.  I'm looking at THE NEW
NAP book

Designing Mathematics or Science Curriculum Programs: A Guide for Using
Mathematics and Science Education Standards (1999)
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9658.html (entirely online).

Check out p 3&4: US Science Textbooks run approximately 2X as many topics as
the international mean at all studied levels, close to 3X the number of
topics studied by Japanese students.  We are  'a mile wide and an inch deep'
and we seem to repeat ourselves with the same inch.  Also check out pages 5-7,
which discuss practices like Mastery which when applied to so broad a
curriculum having no depth actually impedes student learning in science and
math.  I guess that should be a mile wide, an inch deep and incoherently
repeated at the levels studied.  The issue of repetitive surveys is also
discussed in this first chapter.

Look about http://books.nap.edu/books/0309065275/html/3.html#pagetop
to start

Seeing as a lot of the K-12 folk model themselves after us college science
teachers, I think the choices we need to make about depth vs breadth in
lower division classes is pretty obvious.  We are deceiving a lot of people
into thinking they understand stuff when they're only surveying the trivial
at incredible speed.

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu          http://purcell.phy.nau.edu         PHYS-L list owner