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Re: Bad textbooks (an example for the skeptical)



Yes, public school teachers are generally prevented from adopting it.
However, I can adopt it as I am in a private school. In addition I am under
the impression that some teachers manage adopt non state approved texts.
Many districts have district wide adoption, which totally prevents a good
text from being adopted. The net result is that the state adoption process
has locked most middle schools into grossly inferior science texts. I just
talked to a teacher involved in a district adoption process and the question
of the accuracy of the text was never questioned. Also whether of not the
students actually learn better was not mentioned. The main point of
discussion revolved around a fight between MS and 9th grade teachers over
whether the text should have glossy pictures!!! I would side with the MS
school teachers and go for fewer distracting elements in the text. They are
just there to appeal to the purchasers and parents and generally do little
to improve the presentation. Often they present situations which are too
complex for analysis and many are often wrong. IPS is much leaner and
adheres to the national science standards as well as lining up much better
with the research.

The adoptable HS physics texts are at least accurate, but they do not follow
the available research into how students learn physics. This latter defect
is probably of little consequence because there is only, to my knowledge, 1
text which is in line with current physics education research, and most
teachers would find it difficult to use.

Ideally the texts should be written in conformance with the research. You
will notice that the evidence for refutational text is not new. A newer
paper in JRST 35 #1 pp 23-37 (1999) Effects of Learning Cycle and
Traditional Text on Comprehension of Science Concepts by Students at
Differing Reasoning Levels, Musheno&Lawson shows that just rearranging the
presentation into a learning cycle approach yields better results.
Meanwhile the books promote the following bad practices:
1. Definitions first (exploration MUST come first in the learning cycle see
many papers by Karplus, Lawson)
2. Theoretical concepts before descriptive concepts (Lawson has several
recent papers on this in JRST)
3. Cookbook verification labs (See: Laws, McDermott, Thornton, Sokoloff
papers)
4. Plug and Chug problems (fewer rich context problems are much better, see
papers by the Hellers)
5. Presentation of the scientific method as a memorizable set of steps. (A
better method is presented in: JRST 37 #7 pp 655-675 What is the Purpose of
this Experiment?, Hart et al)
6. Little attention to activities which have been shown to improve
student's scientific reasoning (See: Shayer&Adey in JRST and other
publications)

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


But, John, doesn't that mean you cannot adopt it in TEXAS?

John Clement wrote:
The only middle school textbook
that received a passing grade was Introductory Physical Science
, - Highly
recommended by an article in Science News "Where's the Book" by Janet
Ratloff, and also by John Hubisz in The Physics Teacher, 39(5)
May 2001 pp
304-309. It has the virtue of being written and published by one
author (Uri
Haber-Schaim), so it will be nearly error free. It has been extensively
classroom tested, and is now in 7th edition. It is consistent
with many of
the ideas found by research to promote better learning. It may
be purchased
from Science Curriculum Inc., Belmont, Mass. www.sci-ips.com

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

Dr. Karl I. Trappe Desk (512) 471-4152
Lecture Demonstration Office Office (512) 471-5411
Physics Department, Mail Stop C-1600 Home (512) 264-1616
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1081