Re: Constructivist philosophy (was electric charge)

[Bob Sciamanda <trebor@VELOCITY.NET>]

I am not a devotee of "constructivism" and have even argued against some
of their practices in this forum.  What I do advocate - and have been
practicing since the 1960's - is that the student's active role in the
construction of scientific models be made a conscious endeavor on both the
teacher and students' part.  This idea is very old, and best gleaned from
the writings of Poincare and Einstein.

Eg: rather than simply defining a "vector" to represent rotational
velocity and handing the finished product to the student, ask: "How can we
invent a vector to usefully represent rotations...?"   Make it clear that
we are constructing new realities for their usefullness - not merely
discovering things written in nature's stones.  Fill your lectures with
phrases like, "If you want to believe in the conservation of momentum ...
In the Newtonian model . . . "  Make it clear that we are designing and
freely choosing useful models - not persuing some pre-existing absolute
truth.

Years of feedback leave no doubt that this attitude removes mountainous
stumbling blocks in the logical structure of students' understanding.  So
many of their questions of the ilk: "Why is this so? ... are already
implicitly answered: "Because we found it useful to define it so".

P.S. These considerations make me a strong advocate of the lecture method.

Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Clement" <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2001 1:13 AM
Subject: Constructivist philosophy (was electric charge)


> I would call Bob Sciamanda's essay a very good explanation of basic
> constructivist philosophy.  When applied to education it recognizes that
> students construct their versions of reality based up on experience and
what
> they learn in class.  Along with this idea is the basic recognition that
> concepts are constructed rather than being communicated.  One can
attempt to
> communicate them, but what the student actually does is use the
teacher's
> messages as part (often a very small part) of the information used to
> construct the ideas.
>  . . .