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Re: intro chapter on logic



While on the face of it one would think it is a good idea, however the
history of this sort of thing is depressingly bad. Lawson's evaluation
Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning is a good indicator of whether or not
students have improved critical thinking. To get gain on such a test
without telling students the answers, you probably need to use many of the
techniques promoted by PER. The articles by Shayer and Adey show that it is
possible to move students up significantly, but their program takes 2 years.
The reformed course at AZ State has good gain, but again it takes a full 2
semesters to achieve it. I have seen papers that claim that logic courses
do not actually improve students ability to actually use logic.

Basically thinking is only promoted by doing things that force students to
think, and by denying them the ability to get by on just memorization.
Modeling has 1 standard question that is continually used on students "How
do you know that". The modeling instructor must never be satisfied with
just a cursory answer. Similarly Hake's Socratic Dialog Labs use these
types of questions on students. Well trained instructors in other reformed
curricula will use similar questions to challenge the students. It probably
does not hurt to give the students guidance as the course goes on, but not
as a separate topic. The Minds on Physics text does that sort of thing.

The only tests other than Lawson's test that comes close to evaluating the
student understanding of the scientific method is Redish's MPEX evaluation
of possibly Hestene's VASS. Both of these are attitude surveys and the MPEX
shows depressingly low gain in most courses. In some courses such as
Workshop Physics the gain is zero rather than being negative in other
courses.

Standard HS texts have a dreary section on the scientific method, and many
states test whether the students have memorized the N steps of the
scientific method. N is a variable chosen by the state standards committee.
It should be razor bladed out of the book before the students get it. Even
the conservative review of HS texts in the Physics teacher called this sort
of thing anathema.

I also use these techniques in computer science and they may actually work
better in a related field rather than in science or math courses. Some of
my students have reported that they thought about the techniques that were
promoted in computer science when they took the SAT math portion. They said
the type of analysis I promoted helped them with the questions. Later after
they reported that, they told me they had improved their scores between 40
and 100 points. It may be easier to promote math thinking outside of math
courses. Students do not associate past failures with the course, and they
may be more receptive to different techniques. And yes this is anecdotal
evidence, but I have no really good evaluations that might test what I am
doing in comp sci. so I report it for what it is worth.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Good Evening.

In our introductory physics and astronomy courses, we very often
speak of teaching our students how to think critically and how to
employ valid scientific reasoning. However, despite this lofty
and often stated goal, we seldom if ever actually provide
instruction in critical thinking and logic. Would it not be a
good idea to actually include this material at the very beginning
of the course? An introductory chapter could provide instruction
on how to recognize logical fallacies and how to construct valid
lines of reasoning as they apply in the sciences.

This idea came to me last week while reading the first chapters
of Jeff Bennett and and William Briggs' text "Using and
Understanding Mathematics: A Quantitative Reasoning Approach,
Second Edition" published by Addison-Wesley. It suddenly occurred
to me that we can never expect our students to learn this stuff
unless authors actually include it in their texts and we, the
instructors, actually include it in our classes.


Cheers,
Joe