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Re: [Phys-l] STUDY SUGGESTS NO CHILD LAW MAY BE DUMBING DOWNSTUDENTS




The tests that were being done by Shayer are things that according to Piaget
were found to click in before age 10. Subsequent research revealed that
these actually are understood at a variety of ages, and that some adults
never understand them. Conventional schooling does not seem to affect
understanding of these tasks, but specialized teaching using the learning
cycle with hands on/minds on lessons does have an effect. The continuous
drill which has been instituted in schools in place of education certainly
does not help students to understand these tasks. The water displacement
task seems to be impossible for students before age 7, even when shown it by
experiment. Understanding of these tasks requires both brain development,
and experience for students to construct this understanding. These are
examples of conservation reasoning.

These tasks are considered markers of concrete operational thinking and are
necessary to be understood, before higher level tasks. Notice that they did
not show research on the markers of formal operational thinking such as
proportional reasoning. This latter maker of reasoning is only acquired by
about 25% of graduating seniors in the US according to my admittedly limited
survey. But this is confirmed by others.

As to recess, this is where students interact in an unstructured setting.
This is absolutely necessary to normal development, and is where they
acquire executive functioning according to the cognitive scientists. It is
not acquired in formal classroom settings. Without good executive
functioning they can not control behavior adequately for good learning.
There are some programs designed to promote executive functioning, but they
do not resemble conventional classroom lessons, and have only been used in a
small limited set of schools. The evidence is very positive that they do
work. There was an article in the NY Times science section about them.

As to the raising of the high stakes tests, there is no use beating someone
for something that they have no control over. The teachers do not
understand or have the programs that are needed to promote good learning.
When a student is at a low level of thinking, they can NOT learn things like
algebra. When they do not understand whether to add, multiply, subtract or
divide, any advanced math is opaque. They lack proportional reasoning, and
the conventional teaching of ratios is not useful in teaching it.

The answer is that teachers need to be trained in pedagogical content
knowledge. The TIMMS report shows that European and Asian teachers have
such knowledge and ask students better questions. And of course the
American texts are entirely too long and clotted with undigested, confusing
material. But along with this districts need to allow different approaches
rather than saddle teachers with one size fits all teaching. While teaching
gobs of material may not be as damaging in schools with high SES students,
it is the kiss of death in lower level schools. Essentially it promotes a
high dropout rate, which the school welcomes as a solution to achieving good
test scores. And dropout rates are very high, but schools find ways of
hiding it such as claiming the student transferred to another school, but
this is never verified.

An example of poor texts is the TX IPC text aimed at the high stakes science
questions. It defines acceleration in terms of velocity, and then proceeds
to show that negative acceleration is ALWAYS negative when something slows
down, using speed graphs. The ancillary materials use motion as examples of
NTNs third law and in questions imply that you can distinguish between
action and reaction and implies that the terms are not interchangeable.
Then of course it has the old saw that chemical bonds contain energy, but in
a much later section correctly says that breaking bonds requires energy.
The section on NTN is incoherent, and equations are supplied willy nilly
without any justification. When a student asks where the equation
KE=1/2mv^2 comes from the teacher can not answer it!

Then there are those who say get rid of the incompetent teachers, but when
none of the 9th grade teachers really understand the material well enough to
spot the misconceptions promoted by the books, this is not possible.

There is plenty of research that shows how it is possible to promote better
student learning, but this can not be done by just shoving more material at
them. I would suggest several books:
Really Raising Standards by Michael Shayer & Philip Adey
Learning Intelligence by Shayer & Adey
Instrumental Enrichment by Reuven Feuerstein
And of course Teaching Introductory Physics by Arnold Arons

These books detail and reference relevant research. There is also plenty of
research in JRST, especially papers by Lawson et al.

As to George Bush's fault, I have not seen any politicians who have a real
understanding of the educational problems. Obama is one of the few who
intimately worked on the problem, but he has not proposed anything that
relates to the know problems of low student thinking skills. He is aware
that the problem is very intractable because he has witnessed first hand
that it is difficult to make even small progress. Bush can be faulted for
the unnecessary war in Iraq, and for having his people alter and hide
scientific reports that are contrary to his political positions. States
such as TX already were whipping teachers and students to make the assembly
line run faster long before he became president. But then he was governor
of TX. Remember what happens to the defect rate when the assembly line runs
too fast.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Simplistic answers
like too much testing (or too high stakes--although I would prefer higher
stakes, but with the consequences firmly on the students), lack of recess
(a
pitiful one), or the catch all "it's George Bush's fault" (soon to be
unavailable), miss the complexity of the interplay of society and
technology
and the effects on individuals.

I agree that stakes for testing need to be mostly on the students,
but they can also be so high there that either they discourage the
students or further encourage cheating, or both. I still feel that by
placing so much emphasis on current learning of factoids we miss the
most important aspect of education, and that is what remains after
all the factoids have long since been forgotten. Of course, that is
difficult to measure, especially in the short term, and we as a
society seem to be mostly interested in the short term, believing
(hoping?) that the long term will take care of itself.

But I would like to focus on the issue of recess. Rick denegrates it
as an issue ("pitiful"), but, at least at the primary and middle
grades, I think it is terribly important. High school is probably
different, because they have never, in my memory had recess, as such,
although I do decry the dramatic decrease in physical education
requirements. Teenagers, especially, are bursting with energy, and
they need someplace to burn that off, or they become increasingly
restive in class. Our kids are far too sedentary now, and the absence
of recess only makes that situation worse. I think it has been pretty
well establish that a reasonable degree of exercise is necessary to
make learning effective. Completely sedentary students tend to have
short attention spans, either wandering off to mischief, or to sleep.
All students need some activity, just to keep an adequate supply of
blood moving through their brains. And as John C. has pointed out,
much of the students' social education comes from interactions at
recess. So I see recess as something much more than Rick's "pitiful."
Without exercise, mental activity suffers. So I would argue to bring
back recess in primary and middle grades and daily physical education
classes for high schools.