[Phys-L] Re: Lab Reports (was Human Error)

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

Unfortunately the evidence you cited is anecdotal.  Such evidence can be
used to indicate that something might be true, but it is notoriously
unreliable.  For this reason it can not be used as primary evidence in a
journal article on education.  It can certainly be used as supporting
evidence.  The only way to rally know what is really being learned it to
have a good researched evaluation such as the FCI/FMCE.

Many teachers can cite anecdotal evidence, even when most of the students
learned very little.  It is a great thing to have to forward to
administrators who do not understand what real evidence is.  It is good for
cocktail parties and list serve posts, but it will not hold up in refereed
journals.  The medical journals are filled with accounts of anecdotal
evidence which strongly pointed to cures for diseases.  The overwhelming
majority of these accounts were proven false by controlled experiments.

Conventional labs aimed at making students more adept at taking and
analyzing data are actually very crude instruments which are treating the
symptoms, and not the problems.  The problems are categorized by Reuven
Feuerstein, and he came up with superb instruments that actually treat them
at the atomic level rather than at the macroscopic level.  Unfortunately PER
has yet to really face up to this particular set of problems.

If you have any interest in learning why students have difficulties you
should read and reread "Instrumental Enrichment" by Reuven Feuerstein, 1980.
Unfortunately, Feuerstein can not directly give you what to do because he
did not concentrate on college physics students, but his ideas can be very
helpful.  He worked with extremely low performers and brought them up to
normal, but the same problems he describes appear in "normal" students, but
at a lesser degree.  By low performers he took teenagers who measured at IQ
65 and brought them up to normal (100), or students 2 years behind in their
schooling and also brought them up to normal.  Mehl in S. Africa used
Feuerstein's ideas and changed a 50% failure rate into 100% passing and even
managed to do an excellent experimental/control study which should pass
muster with the US Dept. of Education.

Feuerstein uses case studies, control experiments, and anecdotal evidence to
show the effects of his treatments.  The most striking account is by a
teacher who took her students on a field trip to an arboretum to observe
nature.  Some of her students had been treated by the IE program and some
had not.  The untreated students wrote random observations in their lab
books.  The treated students carefully organized their books into sections
and categorized the things they saw as they observed them.  The description
by the amazed teacher is a powerful confirmation of the other evidence that
students who were treated were thinking logically and in an organized
fashion.  The IE program BTW does not have the students do any type of lab
work, or even any standard curriculum material, yet it had a powerful effect
on the student's lab work.  It treated the students ability to think, not
just their ability to follow basic instructions.

What you are seeing when students blame everything on "human error" is a
pattern of disorganized thinking and perception.  It has a number of
components each of which need to be treated.  The standard lab procedure
just forces them to do it one way, but never really penetrates to the level
of their misconceptions.  This problem has been perpetuated by the standard
lab reports which students have to write in HS, and by the laid out lab
sheets common to most science courses.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> Contrary to comments by Uretsky and Hake, I think my labs and lab
> reports are teaching exactly what I think they are teaching.
>
> Students who were responsible, followed my advice, enjoyed science,
> wanted to become better scientists... come back at homecoming or
> commencement weekend and tell me over and over...
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