I heard Carl Wieman talk on this recently in Colorado. You might look at his
website in Canada. www.cwsei.*ubc*.ca/
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I have not delved into the site, and it certainly has the right sort of
orientation for a research based curriculum. But I did not see any evidence
on the surface that the deeper problems are being considered.
My criticism of PER, of which this is certainly an example, is that it needs
to consider the state of the student, and particularly cognitive deficits.
All too often this is ignored. While there is evidence that the learning
cycle increases cognitive ability, one may have to target specific cognitive
problems rather than just targeting the curriculum. Phillips and Colletta
are working on this now, so there is hope for the future.
The good thing about this site is that it also considers the question of
what we should be teaching. PER is hampered by mandated curricula which are
often too broad, and complete coverage means that students would then come
away with little gain. It has been shown that students do better in the end
by being taught in depth and well on a fewer number of topics, rather than
the usual scatter gun approach. PER works best when the teacher is not
forced to do counterproductive things.
Actually on the surface this web site is very good advertising and presents
the problem very well. There is nothing wrong with good advertising when
you have a good well thought out product.