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]

CID (Conceptual, Inquiry, Discovery) vs. QPS (Quantitative Problem Solving)



Please excuse this LONG cross-posting (please don't repeat the entire
post in replying to the list!) to:
Phys-L <http://mailgate.nau.edu/archives/phys-l.html>,
PhysLrnR <http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/physlrnr.html>,
Physhare <http://lists.psu.edu/archives/physhare.html>.
AP Physics discussion list
<http://www.collegeboard.org/ap/listserv/tech.html>
(no easily searchable archives)

In his 4/24/01 Phys-L post "Re: conceptual vs. QPS, was AP Physics
Students," Tim Burgess wrote:

"The nature of existing courses designed for scientists and engineers
may be also acting to screen out those who do not wish to invest the
level of intensive effort required (such as elementary school
teachers)."

Unfortunately, the primary goal of most US physics departments is twofold:

(1) to train future traditional physics researchers (i.e., to clone
the physics faculty), and

(2) to "serve as a gatekeeper, keeping the unworthy out of certain
professions such as medicine and engineering."(1)

These goals act to emphasize screening rather than student learning
in introductory courses for non-research-career students and to
discourage not only prospective K-12 teachers, but also many other
potential physics majors.

This issue has a long history (see, e.g., refs. 2-5). In the words of
Ken Ford,(5) - as true today as they were in 1987:

"From the second Ann Arbor Conference, November 1962 . . .(ref. 3). .
. . came a succinct and memorable recommendation: that two kinds of
curricula for physics majors be developed (to meet the needs of two
kinds of students). These were named curriculum R and curriculum S.
Curriculum R (for Research) was the then-current (and still dominant)
undergraduate curriculum, whose principal aim is to prepare students
for graduate study in physics. CURRICULUM S (FOR SYNTHESIS) WAS TO
SERVE STUDENTS WHO WANTED TO STUDY PHYSICS AS BACKGROUND FOR
SOMETHING OTHER THAN PHYSICS RESEARCH: BUSINESS, LAW, MEDICINE,
TEACHING, SOME
OTHER SCIENTIFIC STUDY, OR JUST INFORMED CITIZENSHIP.

What has happened? Sad to say, NOTHING. Curriculum R was already
strong and is still strong. CURRICULUM S DID NOT EXIST THEN AND IT
DOES NOT EXIT NOW (IN FIRST APPROXIMATION)." (My CAPS.)

Curriculum R is an austere four-story building, taller than it is
wide. The diligent physics major climbs through its layers of
requisites and prerequisites and emerges on top, ready to ascend to
graduate school.(At the second-floor level is a well-traveled ramp
over which engineering students - and some other students - depart
after completing the first year of the curriculum.) Next door is the
Curriculum S desert, containing only a few scattered blossoms . . . .
another curriculum has come into being. . . Curriculum T (for
terminal) . . . . (with) courses on astronomy, arms control, solar
energy, conceptual physics, physics of music, physics and sports,
high-fidelity sound, and on and on . . .

It is time to look again at Curriculum S . . . . . We need majors
with aspirations other than physics research. Ours is an exciting
field, a central part of the liberal arts. It provides a useful
background for many activities. Should we not promote its serious
study by future teachers, lawyers, and business people. Above all, we
need a physics major program suitable for (and attractive to) some of
the teachers of the next generation - not just high-school physics
teachers, but elementary and middle school teachers as well. . . .

What building should rise on the Curriculum S desert? Obviously it
should be four stories high. But it must also be wide. Perhaps it
needs express elevators to upper floors, corridors in which to move
about on a given floor, stairways to go down as well as up. And it
may need large atria (gaps) to keep its cost down. In mathematical
skills and raw problem-solving ability, students who pursue
Curriculum S may get no further than those on the second or third
floor of the Curriculum R tower, but their breadth of understanding
or their acquisition of certain practical skills may compensate. . .
. The building site awaits attention."

Since the above was written, a new four-story building has arisen on
the Curriculum S desert: the Curriculum MP (for Multiple Paths)
tower. Instead of Curriculum S's top-down construction,(3,4)
Curriculum MP has been been erected from the bottom up(6) by
individual departments and driven at least partially by a desire to
increase physics-major enrollments. It features two-way ramps and
shuttle services to other departments and schools so as to allow
physics majors to take courses in the arts and humanities, business,
engineering, computing, education, etc. An outstanding early example
is "engineering physics" programs at universities which have
engineering schools on campus. On page 42 of ref. 2, I have listed 36
physics departments that currently have MP curricula.

Although Curriculum MP provides a non-research-career option for
physics majors, it does not, in general, provide a synthesis of
physics so as to promote both "informed citizenship" and success in
all vocations including teaching.

In my opinion, if Curriculum S is to promote success in all
vocations, it must intermix BOTH CID (Conceptual, Inquiry, Discovery)
and QPS (Quantitative Problem Solving).


Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>

REFERENCES
1. D. Goodstein, Oersted Medal acceptance speech, "Now Boarding: The
Flight from Physics," Am. J. Phys. 67(3),183-186 (1999). See also D.
Goodstein, "The Coming Revolution in Physics Education, APS News,
June 2000, on the web at <
<http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0600/060017.html>: "My friends and
colleagues across the county tell me that the number of students
majoring in physics is at its lowest point since Sputnik, more than
40 years ago. . . . . We are in deep trouble. Our methods are
obsolete, and our product is not in demand . . . . . If the
profession of teaching physics were a business, we would be filing
for bankruptcy."

2. R.R. Hake, "Is it Finally Time to Implement Curriculum S?" AAPT
Announcer 30(4), 103 (2000); on the web as ref. 13 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake> [CurriculumS.pdf., 3/15/01,
1200K] (400 references & footnotes, 390 hot-linked URL's).

3. Recommendations of the Second Ann Arbor Conference on
Undergraduate Curricula for Physics Major," Am. J. Phys. 31(1), 1-8
(1963).

4. E.L. Jossem, "Undergraduate Curricula in Physics: A Report on the
Princeton Conference on Curriculum S," Am. J. Phys. 32(6), 491-497
(1964).

5. K.W. Ford, "Guest Editorial: Whatever Happened to Curriculum S?"
Phys. Teach., March 1987, pp. 138-139.

6. In this connection see R.J. Furnstahl & S. Rosenberg, "The Bazaar
Approach to Physics Education," AAPT Announcer 30(4), 120 (2000). The
authors propose a curriculum development and reform model based on
the "bazaar approach" to computer software development described in
ref. 7. In the case of physics education, individual teachers or
departments would be the counterparts of the community code experts
(hackers) who contribute to software development. Would it be
possible to construct a viable Curriculum S using the "bazaar
approach" ??

7. Eric S. Raymond, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux
and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary" (O'Reilly &
Associates (1999); continually updated in the open source spirit at
<http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/>.