Re: courses (etc.) on pedagogical technique

[John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

This is a wonderful idea, but often reality is very different from theory.
Most teacher preparation courses tend to be book oriented and do not really
prepare teachers for the problems in class.  The only B I got in a teacher
prep. course was one where the professor preached "authentic evaluation",
but relied on scantron tests.  The grade was lowered because I have extreme
difficulty remembering names and dates, and the test required some detailed
knowledge of such things from the readings.  Never mind the fact that I
could and did thoroughly research topics, read all of the required material,
and understand the concepts in the readings.  Then there was the course in
spirit duplicators, opaque projectors, and not very well taught statistics.
I essentially taught all the other students how to use the antique machines,
and I had to give up accuracy in the final results to do the calculations
the professor's way.  Meanwhile most of the real education I got was in the
bowels of the library poring over copies of JRST and TPT.

One of the more interesting courses was in child development for teachers.
While I learned a lot about physical development, it only touched on some of
the more influential educational psychologists such as Piaget.  I doubt that
the average preservice teacher had the foggiest ideas about the intellectual
stages that children go through and the implications it has for teaching.

The certification exams are also a joke.  The pedagogy exam required all
kinds of detailed knowledge about grade school teaching as well as HS.  I
did not recall ever having been prepared for most of the questions.  I just
thought through each question and very carefully answered each using good
reasoning.  I got close to a perfect score.  Most of the situations in the
questions were totally not applicable to HS or college and were probably
rarely seen in elementary.  The problem is that the tests are put together
by a committee that thinks these are good questions.  They have no evidence
for whether the questions correlate with the ability to control and teach
students.  They have even less idea about any correlation with the
effectiveness of the teacher.  The subject exams also require very low
comprehension of the material.  Most of the questions were factual and
required little analysis.  The questions on equation solving did not require
any ability to actually solve an equation.  They could all be answered by
plugging in the various multiple choice solutions until the correct one was
found.

I did learn some things.  The most valuable information was the terminology
so that I could communicate with other teachers in the same jargon.  I also
became certified, while before I was merely certifiable.

There are some courses which really do help you implement pedagogy.  These
are generally 2 to 4 weeks in the summer and are given by some of the major
PE researchers.  Examples are courses by Thornton, Laws, & Sokoloff or the
Remodeling by Hestenes et al.  When you attend such a workshop, you also
have the opportunity to communicate with other instructors.  This is a good
time to ask how they handle some of the situations you are encountering.
These workshops are also specific to your subject unlike most of the more
general instruction you can get at a local college.

Incidentally HS teachers are observed by administrators and critiqued by
them.  You can be doing exactly the same things as other teachers, give
identical tests with identical grade distributions and still get a low
rating.  If the administrator does not understand or like the style of
pedagogy they will give you a bad rating.  Since most administrators have no
training in science teaching let alone physics they may be incompetent to do
the rating.

All instructors need a good network for support.  Ideally you should be able
to ask a respected colleague to observer your classes, and be able to
observe their classes.  MDs are constantly being observed, and in turn
observe other colleagues in action.  Teachers are too isolated.

Personally I think Tina is doing a wonderful job.  She is doing the right
thing by asking questions and trying to get help in a difficult situation.
She also has gracefully put up with the multitude of conflicting advice that
we are giving her.  She should get a round of applause.  I am sorry I can't
offer her a new job.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> Tina Fanetti wrote:
> > What about a class in graduate school on teaching?
> > I mean really teaching not just being a teaching assistant.
> >
> > It would be sooo useful.  Here people throw around all this
> > pedagogy that I have never heard of and need to look up.
>
> Such courses exist.  For instance:
>
>  -- If you want to each anything in the K-12 range, you need
> a teaching certificate, and in most jurisdictions coursework
> in that area is required.  Because of the requirement, such
> courses are copiously available.  If you've got students who
> sometimes act like 12th-graders, such a course might be just
> the ticket.
>
>  -- If you want a flight instructor certificate, you have to
> take the "FOI" (Fundamentals of Instruction) written test (in
> addition to the technical aeronautical knowledge test).  This
> covers all sorts of things, from practical psychology to how
> to design tests.
>
>  -- When I was a grad student, the department held a 1/2-day
> teaching-techniques "orientation" course for first-time Teaching
> Assistants.  It was pretty useless, but they tried.
>
>  -- Of more use, the university had a "teaching support center"
> that you could call on.  (They wouldn't show up unless invited.)
> I invited them.  They videotaped my interaction with the class
> and afterward gave a pretty insightful critique.
>
>  -- For that matter, when I was an undergraduate, there
> was a mandatory course on "technical presentations" which
> included some discussion of basic pedagogical techniques.
> There was also an optional course that was a projects
> course, that went around rating the various professors
> and giving awards for the best teaching.  Obviously that
> required thinking pretty hard about what constituted good
> teaching.
>
> =============
>
> Suggestion:  Find such a course.  Check on the reputation of the
> instructor.  If you get there and find the instructor knows less
> than you do (which is not particularly unlikely) drop the course
> and try again.  Try again.  Don't give up.  After not-too-many
> tries you should be able to find an instructor who actually knows
> what's what.
>
> A listing of courses in the Sioux City area can be found at
>   http://www.aea12.k12.ia.us/tsgc/coursessummer.htm
>
> Also, for self-study, there's thousands of web pages that discuss
> such things, e.g.
>   http://www.google.com/search?q=designing+multiple-choice+tests
>
> http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/te
achtip/teachtip.htm