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Re: [Phys-l] nature of science

According to a teacher friend the admin. Says they should be using discovery
learning. But she says there is not time because of all the review for
tests. Then on top of it she confesses she feels uncomfortable doing it and
does not understand the process.

Part of the difficulty is also that conventional texts are comfortable and
offer much ancillary material. When a conventional text does include
multiple representations, inquiry, ... the teacher skips over them because
they do not fit in with the conventional paradigm.

It is like the chicken and egg problem. There is some good material, but
now we need to train the teachers. But there is the problem that most
teachers find it difficult to take an extended training of several weeks,
which is the minimum needed to have them do the productive things in class.

The new reformed physics classes will be of some help, but that will take a
while before the newly trained teachers are in the classroom. Anyone who
experiences one of the widely disseminated methods will probably change
their classroom behavior. Unfortunately most of these do not explicitly put
NOS into their curriculum. Modeling does not have any. Minds on Physics
does have some throughout, but it is definitely a minority book. Mostly
this type of thing is relegated to the first chapter of most books.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu on behalf of John Clement
Sent: Sun 3/19/2006 2:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] nature of science

One solution would be to integrate the NOS into the curriculum. Of course
this need to be done in the context of a researched inquiry based course.
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This is the essence of BSCS Science: An Inquiry Approach

http://www.kendallhunt.com/index.cfm?PID=201&CMD=search&DIS=450
http://www.bscs.org/page.asp?pageid=0|31|53|306|58|64

Larry Woolf