Re: [Phys-l] unbiased experiments +- index of refraction

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

> There is 'discovery', 'inquiry', 'guided inquiry', 'modeling,
> 'collaborative', 'cooperative', and that good ol' boy 'traditional
> instruction', all of which are different but none of which are well
> understood (by outsiders).  If I actually understand any of this
> (doubtful),
> the real key is 'engagement', and any way (even traditionally) that you
> get
> the students 'engaged' will supposedly prove (more) successful.  That all
> probably will be met with a 'well DUH' from most.
The inquiry labs go beyond engagement.  It is know that once you give
students an equation they treat the derivation as just a justification that
it is allright to use the equation.  Once students see the definition, they
shut down their thinking and do not use information about the meaning.  This
has been observed in PER by low gain scores and by Michelle Perry as lack of
transfer.  So inquiry labs give a mental model BEFORE the definitions.



> As to 'verification' labs--some lab work is about experimental design and
> technique.  Hard to know if the techniques have been learned with out
> something to calibrate against--like measuring a few knowns.  Sort of like
> trying to do some of the above techniques with no background knowledge--it
> becomes difficult.  [There really are good reason for learning the
> alphabet
> and multiplication tables.  ;-) ]
>
> We can now see the 'new' government course for education (I kind of think
> it
> is the same old one) blaming the teachers and administrators for all the
> failures.  (CLOSE 5000 schools--replace teachers and administrators and
> start over--good luck on that one (certainly 200-300,000 teachers and over
> 5000 administrators to be moved/replaced?  Wonder how the teacher's unions
> feel about their guy right now?)  When will that 'pendulum' return to the
> responsibility of parents and students to be willing and active players in
> the education process?
The parents and students certainly need to be more responsible.  It is not
clear that the fraction of responsible parents and students has changed
dramatically in the past 50 years.  In the 1950s students just dropped out
and disappeared from the system and nobody cared.  But we are now at the
point where an educated population is more at a premium.

There is also no evidence that students learned better in the 1950s because
only the better students went on.  Feynman did point out that students were
not getting it, so I presume that the system back then worked as well or
poorly as it does today.  Now we have the distortions of education brought
on by high stakes testing which has forced many low performing schools to
drill facts rather than educate.  Shayer & Adey showed dramatically that all
schools fall on the same line if you plot output scores vs input scores.  So
they claimed all schools were doing the same thing, and that the output was
merely a function of the input.  But their intervention dramatically raises
the output scores above this line.

I grew up in a farming community where most parents did not really value
education.  They did respect the teachers.  It was assumed that many
children would end up on the farm.  Actually many became educated and left.
25% of the students in my HS class went on to get science degrees.  But
possibly over half of the students left school in the 8th grade and before.

Actually they are closing a few low performing schools and finding that the
newly constituted school is doing no better.  The current political solution
is just to increase the speed of the assembly line.  This is not just the
government, but it is supported by many parents and industry leaders.  The
problem is not THEM is it US.

Shayer & Adey have said they take no position on whether schools are worse
than before.  But they do say that it is possible to do a dramatically
better job.  But this requires some changes.  This is analogous to what Ford
did with the assembly line.  The previous system worked, but it is possible
to do better.  It is possible to improve student thinking, and improve
content knowledge.  It is possible to improve transfer (this is a biggie).

Foreign schools provide resources that American schools do not.  Some
examples are giving teachers common extended time to plan and work together.
The German system has very rigorous training for teachers from what I have
been told.  But we have the advantage that each system within the US can
experiment with different techniques and these can spread, provided they are
not stifled by the high stakes testing.  Foreign schools generally maintain
much more control over their schools than we do.  As a result they can't
blame the teachers.  But they are not getting optimal results as has been
shown to be possible by various experiments.  They are just getting better
results than the US on content tests, but there is some indication that they
may be low on transfer.

So since there are methods that show better outcomes on a variety of
measures, why not use them?  Actually physics is often not included in the
high stakes testing, and it is also the science where the IE methods have
spread the most in HS.  But it is still a small percentage of all classes.
If Rob McDuff can similarly spread his innovation through the Modeling
program, you might begin to see students with much better math skills.  If
Thinking Science were used in middle school you might see students with
higher thinking skills.  Remember it took a generation for MDs to discard
their traditional blood stained prestigious coats and don sterilized gowns.

Teaching will not be held in higher repute until it too goes through the
same scientific revolution that happened in medicine.  Education is harder
than medicine or rocket science.  The variables are more elusive and often
harder to control.  But progress can be and is being made.  Incidentally
medicine is now facing the same educational problem that we are facing and
some schools are changing their way of teaching to be more IE.  Education
needs to be more brain compatible.  If we want to be treated as "education
professionals" we have to act like professionals and pay attention to the
research.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX