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Re: What's Developmentally Appropriate?



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In response to my post (Hake 2003a) titled "Re: Active learning in
theory, active learning in practice, or both?" [but concerned
primarily with "what is developmentally appropriate?"], Bob Leamnson
replied on 4 Oct 2003 13:33:34-0400 in a POD/STLHE-L titled "Hake":

"Back in the 1930's Lev Vygotsky. . . [1978]. . . noticed the same
general phenomena. . . [as the developmental stages of Piaget]. . .
and called it the "zone of proximal development. . . Anything a
teacher or tutor tried to push onto youngsters that was outside this
zone would not be understood, no matter the logic or clarity of the
presentation. I tend to agree that we often tend to teach too much
too early. . . . Barzun called this too-much-too-soon a
'preposterism.' And he got the idea from Quintillian who said that a
great mistake of teachers was trying to start out where they should
be ending up . . . ."

Russ Hunt responded in a similar vein on 4 Oct 2003 14:58:32-0300
with a POD/STLHE-L post titled "Developmentally (in)appropriate":

"I remember a Piaget story from a psychologist friend. At a
presentation where Piaget was going over, yet again, the stages of
development, a young man in the audience asked what could be done to
speed up the changes from one stage to the next -- to help kids learn
to conserve earlier, for instance -- and Piaget sighed. 'Yes.
That's the American question.' We seem often to believe that the
earlier something can be learned, not only the better, but the more
evidence of 'intelligence' it offers."

In Hake (2003a) I quoted the late Arnold Arons (1998) (bracketed by
lines "AAAAAA. . . . .":

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
In 1971 John Renner from Oklahoma, with his graduate student Joe McKinnon
. . .ublished a paper in AJP under the title "Are colleges concerned
with intellectual development?" (McKinnon & Renner 1971). They had
administered the control of variables and ratio reasoning tests to a
group of Oklahoma City University freshmen and found that only 25%
could answer the questions correctly - 25% they regarded as in
transition, and 50% were entirely wrong. . . . there were a number
of papers by various individuals spotted around the country, in AJP,
reporting replication of the McKinnon and Renner results and all of
them circling around about the same figures. College level students:
roughly 1/3 being able to deal with those questions, 1/3 partly
wrong, and 1/3 completely off. Around that point I got in touch with
Bob [Karplus] . . . We wrote this short letter [Arons & Karplus
(1976)] [regarding the above results]. . . . the tsunami wave that it
created was something like the result of dropping a pebble in Lake
Superior - no attention whatsoever."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Arons and Karplus (1976) wrote:

"If our suggested inference is correct [that only that 1/3 of college
freshman have arrived at what Piaget. . . [see, e.g. Inhelder et al.
1987]. . . called the "formal operational" level], it seems to us
that EXPLICIT AWARENESS OF THE PROBLEM AND MEASURES TO ATTACK IT,
MUST BEGIN IN THE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. THESE INSTITUTIONS
EDUCATE THE TEACHERS FOR THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM WITH WHICH WE ARE
CONCERNED. They must provide leadership in converting it from a
passive one that merely allows *sui generis* development of a small
fraction to one that actively assists the intellectual development of
the far larger proportion of the population that we have every reason
to believe is fully capable of abstract logical reasoning." (My CAPS.)

Continuing my Arons-like-addiction to dropping Pebbles Into Lake
Superior (PILS), as demonstrated yet again in Hake (2002a,b,c), I
should like to pose a few questions for Bob Leamnson, Russ Hunt, and
others of like persuasion:

1. Assuming that it's still the case that only 1/3 of college
freshman can deal with control of variables and ratio reasoning, a
necessary element of Substantive Introductory College SCIence/MAth
[SICSCIMA (pronounced "sick schema")] courses [also Substantive
INtroductory HUMANities [SINHUMAN (pronounced "sin human")]
courses?], are we teaching too-much-too-soon in those courses?

2. Are SICSCIMA (and SINHUMAN?) courses "sick" and "sinful" in the
sense that they are "preposterisms"?

3. Should SICSCIMA (and SINHUMAN?) courses be abandoned in favor of
traditional TRansmission to A Passive Target (TRAPT) Lecture courses
that rely primarily on rote memorization, are popular with both
students [see Hake (2003b)] and student-evaluation-obsessed
administrators, and are nearly useless in elevating students'
conceptual understanding [at least as judged by results in physics- &
Astronomy- education research (for a review see Hake (2002a)]?

4. Should SICSCIMA (and SINHUMAN?) courses be continued, but oriented
more towards promoting logical thought, as advocated by PILS pushers
McKinnon & Renner (1971) and Arons & Karplus (1976)?

For a review of discussion-list posts on enhancing and measuring
students' "reasoning skills" and "critical thinking" see Hake (2001).

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>

"The simple but difficult arts of paying attention, copying
accurately, following an argument, detecting an ambiguity or a false
inference, testing guesses by summoning up contrary instances,
organizing one's time and one's thought for study - all these arts .
. . .cannot be taught in the air but only through the difficulties of
a defined subject; they cannot be taught in one course in one year,
but must be acquired gradually in dozens of connections."
Jacques Barzun


REFERENCES
Arons, A.B. & R. Karplus. 1976. "Implications of Accumulating Data on
Levels of Intellectual Development," Am. J. Phys. 44: 396. Reprinted
in Fuller (2002).

Arons, A.B. 1998. "Research in physics education: The early years."
In T.C. Koch and R.G. Fuller, eds., PERC 1998: Physics Education
Research Conference Proceedings 1998, online at
<http://physics.unl.edu/~rpeg/perc98/index.html>.

Fuller, R.G., ed. 2002. "A Love of Discovery: Science Education - The
Second Career of Robert Karplus." Kluwer. This is a valuable resource
containing seminal papers of Karplus and his colleagues.

Hake, R.R. 2001. "Critical Thinking," post of 28 Mar 2001
14:20:54-0800 to PhysLrnR, STLHE-L, POD, AERA-D, and Chemed-L; online
at <http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0103&L=pod&P=R10268>.

Hake, R.R. 2002a. "Lessons from the physics education reform effort."
Conservation Ecology 5(2): 28; online at
<http://www.consecol.org/vol5/iss2/art28>. "Conservation Ecology," is
a FREE "peer-reviewed journal of integrative science and fundamental
policy research" with about 11,000 subscribers in about 108 countries.

Hake, R.R. 2002b. "Physics First: Precursor to Science/Math Literacy
for All?" Summer 2002 issue of the American Physical Society "Forum
on Education Newsletter" Summer; online at
<http://www.aps.org/units/fed/newsletters/summer2002/index.html>. For
a more complete and illustrated version see Hake (2002c).

Hake, R.R. 2002c. "Physics First: Opening Battle in the War on
Science/Math Illiteracy?" Submitted to the "American Journal of
Physics" on 27 June 2002; online as ref. 29 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/>.

Hake, R.R. 2003a. "Re: Active learning in theory, active learning in
practice, or both?" post of 3 Oct 2003 20:34:50-0700 to AP-Physics,
ASSESS, Biopi-L, Chemed-L, EvalTalk, Math-Learn, Phys-L, Physhare,
POD, & STLHE-L; online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0310&L=pod&O=A&P=2480>. [The
URL for "Hake 2002b" was given incorrectly - see that reference
above.]

Hake, R.R. 2003b. "Hostility to Interactive Engagement Methods," post
of 13 Oct 2003 15:08:37-0700 to PhysLrnR, Phys-L, POD, and STLHE-L;
online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0310&L=pod&O=D&P=7069>.

Inhelder, B., D. de Caprona, and A. Cornu-Wells, eds. 1987. "Piaget
Today." Erlbaum.

McKinnon, J.W. & J.W. Renner. 1971. "Are colleges concerned with intellectual
development?" Am. J. Phys. 39: 1047-1052.

Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. "Mind in society: the development of higher
psychological processes," ed. by M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S.
Scribner, & E. Souberman. Harvard Univ. Press.