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Re: [Phys-l] Physics First Revisited



If you want to infuse science into elementary school, look at the early
program by Shayer & Adey detailed in their book "Learning Intelligence". Of
course what they are doing is actually raising student thinking, but it
involves science.

But one problem I see with the <try it and see> part is that you need an
experienced teacher who can make sure they do it correctly. I set up a
couple of the Thinking Science modules for a teacher that I was helping.
They were very simple. One involved just hanging a fixed 400g mass 2 units
from the center of a balance beam, and then finding what masses needed to be
hung on the other side to get it to balance. There were only 8 possible
positions, and they were given only eight 100g masses. So it turns out that
they did it wrong every imaginable way. The instructions were quite clear,
and the students were given concrete preparation. To make it work the
teacher had to go around and use Socratic dialog with each group, as well as
tell them they had to find all four possible balance combinations. Well the
common mistake is to change the fixed mass to make everything work.

The result of the simple balance beam experiment was that they discovered
that the distance x mass was constant. Then they were challenged to use
this. There were students who seemed to be very excited when they got it
right. They were also made to read each question before answering it. Some
students actually began to use some proportional reasoning, but most used
concrete operations to get answers. These were 10th graders.

One point is that it will be perceived as science, and not just reading, so
there will be teacher resistance. Also the amount of training would be
essentially what is needed for a science teacher. But if it is purely
reading, then it will have extremely limited effectiveness. The goal of
getting students to read expository text is quite laudible, but if you want
effective science you need far more than that.

Actually what is needed is not an early education "physics" program, but
rather an early education thinking science program. I don't think you can
pull the wool over people's eyes and make them think it is a reading
program. At age 7 it is possible to start having students understand the
"concrete operational" Piagetian tasks by having them do inquiry labs on
them. These would be labs where they learn that a ball of clay maintains
its weight no matter how you flatten it, and that identical sized objects
displace water the same amount when they sink. Before age 7 it is not
possible. By age 9 they should understand all of the Piagetian tasks, and
begin to pick up some precursors to proportional reasoning, but not full
blown proportional reasoning. "Physics" can wait until they have learned
some higher level reasoning skills, but they can learn a few elements of it.
Is displacement of water physics, chemistry, or just plain old science?

They would also have to get into multiple representations of concepts, which
would involve drawing, measuring, and explaining. The sort of things that
they need to do would take them far from "reading". And that is the point.
Just pushing reading is neglecting other ways of knowing and perceiving
things. But getting students into alternate ways of thinking, helps their
reading. The Shayer & Adey method is designed to produce cognitive
enhancement by having the students do science. It is not aimed at either
math or English, but there was far transfer into both of those subjects.

I am saying that science can be the gateway to better reading, but the
reverse has not been shown to be true. Until it is recognized that other
areas of study have big contributions to make to reading and math skills,
the improvement in the reading and math will probably languish. Reading and
math by themselves then become contextless and you see poor transfer.

Incidentally reading programs have now hit a stumbling block. The research
shows that phonics does improve the individual word decoding, but it has not
been successful in helping students understand what they are reading. The
whole word advocates had some good points which were ignored. The reading
probably needs to be combined with other skills such as science. The
reading then needs to be used as a skill necessary for the other subject.
In other words the text is given context by the other subject, which may
help the decoding.

Of course it would not hurt to set up an experimental program to see what
the problems are and whether it will work. But as Robert Karplus found, he
had to throw out more ideas that didn't work than ones that did. Also I
suspect that there will be a huge resistance to a reading program that did
not come from reading specialists, so you would have a large amount of
convincing to do.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


John C.,
I agree that pupils have to perceive that reality either supports or
refutes their predictions. That is what the <try it and see> part is
about. The point is to call an early education physics program that
would work if people used it, a reading program. In elementary schools,
reading time is prime time.
Jeff