Re: [Phys-l] workable versus unworkable energy

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Right on.  The research shows that you start making concrete connections,
and then move toward abstract representations.  One must be aware of the
difficulties and then work to help students construct the ideas.  Students
do use abstractions, but are unaware of this.  So one must try to make them
aware of what they are thinking (metacognition), and provide the analogies
and concrete representations needed to support the concepts.

Einstein is often considered very abstract, but his thoughts on relativity
use very concrete examples.

Unfortunately many student shave lost any sense that science and math make
sense because they have been forced to achieve by memorizing abstract
results that they do not understand.  It is amazing once you know how
connections are made, that it is possible to look a conventional text and
visualize how it will be misconstrued by most students.  One wonders why the
authors can't see the problems.  Do any of them pay attention to the
research?

To bring this back to energy, the real problem is that energy is profoundly
abstract and in general can not be measured directly unlike force, or even
acceleration.  This is why concrete analogies are vital for beginning
students, and even many graduate students.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> I don't think it is a simple as that.  I think concrete and abstract
> are poles on a continuum, and any student can move on it depending on
> the learning environment you create for that student.