In her Dewey-L post of 18 Feb 2006 titled "Dewey Joke," Celinda Scott
(2006) related a joke she had found on the "John Dewey Project in
Progressive Education" site <http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/> of the
College of Education and Social Services of the Univ. of Vermont
[bracketed by lines "SSSSSSS. . . ."]:
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Imagine a modern educational reformer at a séance successfully
calling up John Dewey.
Reformer: "Professor Dewey, we have labored for 15 years to improve
America's schools without success. Please tell me how we can create
the kinds of schools our children need and deserve?"
Dewey: "Well, there's the natural way and the miraculous way. Which
do you want?"
Reformer (his idealism faltering): "The natural way."
Dewey: The natural way would be for God to send down bands of angels
to visit every single public school and transform them into places of
true learning."
Reformer: "Good heavens! (gasp) What then is the miraculous way?"
Dewey: "Ah, the miraculous way would be for the people to do it themselves."
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
And speaking of do-it-yourself miracles, in "The Physics Education
Reform Effort: A Possible Model for Higher Education" [Hake (2005)],
I wrote [bracketed by lines "HHHHHHH. . . .":
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I see no reason that student learning gains far larger than those in
traditional courses could not eventually be achieved and documented
[as has been done in physics - see e.g., Wieman & Perkins (2005)] if
other disciplines from arts through philosophy to zoology IF [here a
MIRACLE would be required] their faculty practitioners would:
(a) reach a consensus on the *crucial* concepts that all beginning
students should be brought to understand;
(b) undertake the lengthy qualitative and quantitative research
required to develop multiple-choice tests (MCT's) of higher-level
learning of those concepts [see e.g., Halloun & Hestenes (1985a,b)];
(c) develop Interactive Engagement methods suitable to their disciplines.
Why MCT's? So that the tests can be given to thousands of students in
hundreds of courses under varying conditions in such a manner that
meta-analyses can be performed, thus establishing general causal
relationships in a convincing manner.
But can multiple-choice tests measure *higher-order* learning? Wilson
& Bertenthal (2005) think so, writing (p. 94): "Performance
assessment is an approach that offers great potential for assessing
complex thinking and learning abilities, but multiple choice items
also have their strengths. For
example, although many people recognize that multiple-choice items
are an efficient and effective way of determining how well students
have acquired basic content knowledge, many do not recognize that
they can also be used to measure complex cognitive processes. For
example, the "Force Concept Inventory" . . . [Hestenes et al. 1992] .
. . is an assessment that uses multiple choice items to tap into
higher-level cognitive processes."
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
REFERENCES
Hake, R. R. 2005. "The Physics Education Reform Effort: A Possible
Model for Higher Education," online as ref. 37 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake> or download directly by
clicking on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/NTLF42.pdf> (100 kB). This is a
slightly edited version of an article that was (a) published in the
National Teaching and Learning Forum 15(1), December 2005, online to
subscribers at
<http://www.ntlf.com>, and (b) disseminated by the Tomorrow's Professor list
<http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings.html> as Msg. 698 on 14 Feb
2006. See also Hake (2006).
Hake, R.R. 2006. "Measuring Teaching and Learning Performance:
Interconnected Issues," in "Proceedings of the Third International
Conference on Measurement and Evaluation in Education (ICMEE 2006),"
Penang, Malaysia, 13-15 February. This paper is also online with
hot-linked URL's as ref. 38 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake> or download directly by clicking on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/ICMEEk-2006.pdf> (230 kB).
Halloun, I. & D. Hestenes. 1985a. "The initial knowledge state of
college physics students." Am. J. Phys. 53:1043-1055; online at
<http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>. Contains the "Mechanics
Diagnostic" test, precursor to the "Force Concept Inventory."
Hestenes, D., M. Wells, & G. Swackhamer, 1992. "Force Concept
Inventory," Phys. Teach. 30: 141-158; online (except for the test
itself) at
<http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>. The 1995 revision by
Halloun, Hake, Mosca, & Hestenes is online (password protected) at
the same URL, and is available in English, Spanish, German,
Malaysian, Chinese, Finnish, French, Turkish, Swedish, and Russian.
Scott, C. 2006. "Dewey Joke," Dewey-L post of 18 Feb 2006
11:29:44-0500; online at <http://tinyurl.com/nyjwl>.
Wieman, C. & K. Perkins. 2005. "Transforming Physics Education,"
Physics Today 58(11): 36-41; soon to be online at
<http://www.colorado.edu/physics/EducationIssues/> / "Papers" (where
"/" means "click on").