Re: [Phys-l] Inquiry

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

I think experiments are very possible if they do not span the entire
semester.  It is possible to change just what you do for one unit.  One
teacher changed the sequence so that he did interactions first along with
NTN3, and found he had better results.  The big barrier to experiments is
the large school where you have several teachers all teaching the same
subject at the same level.

Public school now has so many people looking over your shoulder and
mandating review for the high stakes assessments that good teaching is often
practically impossible.  Smaller schools are better for doing experiments,
but then the statistics are lower.  Some districts mandate which chapter and
even which page is to be covered.  As a result they have instituted a one
size fits nobody curriculum.

Schools which are Modeling friendly would tolerate experiments more, because
the essence of Modeling is to try to do what works, Modelers are fairly open
to experimentation.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> Not at the residential school I attended.
>
> Are  these "experiments" possible in a "public" school?
>
> bc
>
>
> On 2009, Mar 01, , at 07:29, John Clement wrote:
>
> > As a practical necessity,
> > one could do the 2 different methods in different years, but have
> > pretests
> > to be assured that students had comparable incoming knowledge.
> > This gets
> > around the student communication problem.
>
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