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Re: breadth vs. depth (was: less is more)



Every time we get into this conversation, I feel I need to put in my $.02,
which is that we have to be careful about all the "The only thing that works
IS......(you fill in the blank)" primarily because there are a number of
DIFFERENT TYPES of physics courses, especially for everyone other than
Physics (and perhaps science & engineering majors) with a number of
different goals. Declaring that everyone should learn Physics through say
modeling or that _only_ courses that are heavily interactive in their nature
can be successful can often avoid the question of who exactly are the
clientele for these courses and what are the goals of the course.

While are will heartily go along with the notion that our science curriculum
should truly be a K-12 curriculum with more 'teeth' in the middle-school
portion, by the time we get to the final course in HS or the one and only
College course, there are a number of ways to go. Some of these might be:

1) The narrow breadth but deep course (on some set of topics) that stresses
scientific thinking and problem solving.
2) The somewhat broader course that deals primarily with concepts and
scientific thinking.
3) The AP course that is designed to let students test out of college level
courses--that nature of such courses being heavily dependent on what type
and level of courses are being taught at the College level.
4) The Science and Society type course which might be reasonably narrow in
focus but also might not go too terribly deep into the science in order to
spend more time making and exploring the societal interactions.
5) Teacher preparation classes which might be go very heavily into
pedagogical approaches while probably concentrating on a narrow set of
topics--the danger here is that the instructor's choice of topics will then
be imprinted on the new teachers as the only topics they will ever cover in
their classes.
6) Science and engineering preparation courses where there IS a minimal set
of topics that really SHOULD be covered and that minimal set may be fairly
broad. These same classes need to heavily stress 'realistic' problem
solving, laboratory design and technique, as well as (since we now know
we've not done a good job with..) better conceptual understanding.

I'm sure there are other combinations and/or completely different courses
that could be included. The point is, the pedagogy that will work best in
each of these classes is NOT identical. We need to be flexible here are not
try to 'dictate' what must be done.

I liked the comment the other day (was it Brian?) that teaching is really an
ART but we are now in the throws of trying to make a SCIENCE out of it. In
the end, the teachers must weigh the performance of their students against
the goals that they have for the courses to determine whether or not the
pedagogy that they are using has been successful. There will be no one
answer, one magic bullet, one curriculum, or one learning philosophy that
will handle all of the possibilities.

Rick

*************************************************
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
219-284-4664
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
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