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]

Re: Constructivist philosophy (was electric charge)



Again despite the fact that you do not like the label, the philosophy you
have espoused is in line with the basic constructivist philosophy. And it
is probably not a very new idea. Very few ideas in philosophy are new, but
they are often just old ideas refurbished and renamed. The constructivist
idea is generally considered to have come from Piaget's writings. Piaget
was a superb experimentalist who drew his conclusions from his observations.
As such he shares a great deal with the physical scientists.

I suspect that most of the objections to constructivism stem from the
"radical" constructivist writings. Certainly any scientist would take
exception to the idea that any concept that students construct is valid.
But I doubt that any scientist would object to the idea that if a
constructed concept can be successfully tested against physical reality,
then it is valid. It may be possible for example to construct a theory that
works as well as NTNs laws and allows equivalent types of analysis, but does
not involve the idea of force, energy, or momentum. The other objection to
constructivism may come from the radical point of view that lectures have no
benefit. That is obviously not true, but it may be true that conventional
lectures are the least beneficial of various forms of teaching. All forms
of teaching can have some benefit including demonstrations, lectures,
textbook reading, problem solving, and labs, but some of these may be much
more beneficial, and some can be modified greatly to be much more
beneficial. Another objection is often that some constructivists have tried
completely free investigation. This may work with a certain class of highly
motivated students, but it is a failure with the ordinary student. The more
guided inquiry has been found to be much more successful.

The PER results are very concrete, and show that most of the common methods
of teaching are fairly ineffective, when compared to the alternatives. They
do not depend on accepting a particular philosophy beyond that of looking
for testable evidence. The results are consistent with your stated
philosophy, and constructivist philosophy. I would point out that the
labels constructivist and interactive engagement only express a small part
of the philosophy behind the reform movement. For example McDermott's
tutorials require the students to discover (constructivist) the concepts,
but they are very guided (teacher centered?), and at the same time they
require the students to engage with the ideas. They have been carefully
worked out by using the idea of inquiry (constructivist) and then refined
through experimentation and testing (scientific method). Shayer and Adey
used Piagetian ideas to construct their program, but they have carefully
monitored its outcomes, and rely on testing to prove their results.

The real test of good teaching should be the results. Unfortunately it is
not easy to survey students long after the course to see what they have
learned so the primary method of evaluation has generally been standard
tests such as the FCI or FMCE. Anecdotal accounts can provide gratifying
evidence, but they are extremely unreliable. So my question would be what
sort of results have you gotten? And how can these results be compared with
results obtained by other teachers? Without this sort of evidence it is
easy to fool yourself into thinking that your teaching is superior.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


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.
. . .