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[Phys-L] Re: On the Impact of Standards




"The district I am in (Burnsville, Minnesota) is planning on moving
all the
9-12 physics standards into 8th grade. This is because senior
physics is
not a required course and the standards for physical science must be
met/assessed by all students.

In your professional opinion, can/should 8th graders be required to
meet
and be assessed on 9-12 physics standards?

The impact of the current standards has been very negative. But
beyond that how on earth can the 9-12 science standards be moved into
grade 8? Currently HS physics generally requires math beyond what
they have actually taken. In addition building understanding of
physics concepts requires time. Students must interactively engage
with the concepts to acquire an understanding of them. In addition
few of the students have acquired the ability to perform at the formal
operational level by the beginning of grade 8. This does rise
throughout HS and you have a larger fraction able to perform at this
level by senior year, but still only 20% or so. The ability to fully
use hypothetico-deductive reasoning which comes at the formal
operational level is necessary to get a high degree of understanding.
Indeed this level is necessary to really understand algebra. Shayer
and Adey pointed out that students can not understand 3 variable
equations below the formal operational level, such as F=ma, P=F/V ...

This sort of idiocy comes from assuming that students are blank slates
and that you can by lecture imprint them with the truth and turn them
into believers. None of these assumptions are true. All you can do
by cramming all of the standards into 8th grade is to get temporary
memorization with students understanding less, and liking it less. In
either case my impression is that little gets accomplished in middle
school, so this move will effectively kill science education, if that
has not already happened.

Now if physics ideas are to be taught in 8th grade, it might be
effective with the correct Interactive Engagement pedagogy. However,
the MS teachers must also understand the concepts, and be well trained
in the pedagogy. Too many lower grade teachers are telling students
that inertia is a force.

If you really want to improve the performance of a district, then
"Thinking Science" should be used in MS. But to do this the district
would also need to have some trained people who could train the
teachers. TS is designed to raise the thinking level of students by
replacing 70min of science every 2 weeks by thinking lessons involving
science. This really works, but nobody really wants to do it. It had
a dramatic effect on the GCSE in Britain for schools that implemented
this program. All of the test schools had a lower than average
intake, and a higher than average output. Some even had exam scores
consistent with 70% at the formal operational level.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX
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