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Re: [Phys-l] learning, judgment, self-assessment, etc.



I agree with Ludwig, motivation appears to be the key.

All of us in the business have self assessed. We have all felt the stinging shame and bruised ego of having blown a problem. We have all savored a particularly clever solution we came up with - even if the instructor/professor/advisor didn't comment on it. We have replayed both the good and the bad in our minds. We have all felt inadequate when faced with a seeming intractable part of our thesis work or a job we have contracted on.

And those of us who fly replay each flight in our minds as we drive home.

But when faced with students who could care less about gaining insight into material (or even getting simple questions right or wrong - or who blow off assignments and attendance and then plead for a pass at the end of a semester), how do you instill a sense of self assessment in them? I have struggled with this for 30 years. In the cases where I have been successful, I suspect that the students were basically self assessing to some degree to start.

This is a great topic - I am anxious to hear others on this.

Bob at PC

________________________________________
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] on behalf of John Denker [jsd@av8n.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2011 4:01 AM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: [Phys-l] learning, judgment, self-assessment, etc.

Let's consider the following scenario:

It's the last part of a flying lesson. I'm the instructor. The
student and I have landed, parked, and tied down the plane. Now
it's time for the post-flight discussion. I say "OK, replay the
flight for me. Tell me what you did and what you saw. Tell me
what you think went well. Tell me what you wish you had done
differently."

Getting the student to analyze the flight has a tactical advantage
and a strategic advantage:

-- The tactical advantage comes from the fact that if something bad
happened, the conversation is more pleasant if the student can say
"that was really stupid" ... rather than having me tell him how
stupid it was.

-- Much more importantly, the strategic advantage comes from getting
the student to exercise judgment and self-awareness. This is super-
important because:
a) There is no way I will ever teach the student more than some tiny
percentage of what he needs to know. The rest he will have to learn
on his own. So my job is to get him to the point where he can teach
himself.
b) I can hold him to high standards while I am there with him,
but there is no way I (or anybody else) can baby-sit him during
the other 99% of his flying career. He will be very, very much
on his own. So my job is to motivate him to hold himself to high
standards. All I can do is get him started down the right road.

========

This type of self-analysis is absolutely standard in the industry.
There is even a name for it: learner-centered grading, aka student-
centered grading. IMHO _self-assessment_ is a better term, especially
given that no "letter grades" are involved.

This approach is sometimes used in the science classroom ... but only
verrry rarely AFAICT. In particular, I've heard of it being used in
a "math for education majors" course taught by a professor in the
school of education. In any case, I wish to call attention to how
_rarely_ this approach is used in the ordinary science classroom
(at the high-school level and at the undergraduate level).

More emphatically, I wish to call attention to the disparity: How can
a technique that is so highly valued in one discipline (flight instructing)
get such short shrift in another discipline (ordinary classroom science)???

This is a non-rhetorical question. I don't know the answer. I've thought
about it some, but the main points still mystify me. I hope this august
group can shed some light on the issue.

One hypothesis starts from the observation that pilot proficiency is a
matter of life and death. This means everybody involved has a goodly
amount of built-in motivation. A corollary is that any nonsense in
the system tends to get stomped out, vigorously. This is in contrast
to your typical physics assignment, which is generally not seen as
life-and-death. OTOH this hypothetical argument seems to have some
serious weaknesses. For one, motivation doesn't do much good unless
it is channeled into constructive directions, so flight instructors
spend just as much of their time on motivational issues as physics
teachers do. Secondly, classroom teachers are not mindless wind-up
toys, so we ought to be able to stomp out nonsense /before/ it reaches
life-and-death proportions.

Maybe part of the answer is that judgment is explicitly emphasized on
the pilot-training syllabus, but not so much on the physics syllabus.
One could argue that maybe it /should/ be on the physics syllabus.
Hmmm.

A possibly-related observation is that science instruction (quite
unlike flight instruction) tends to be a mile wide and an inch deep.
Why do we tolerate this? Students can't develop any judgment about
what's important unless they are given the chance to do something
important with what they've been taught.

Similar words apply to certain teachers who have learned physics
out of a book and now teach physics out of a book, without having
much (if any) experience solving industrial-strength real-world
physics problems. It's hard for them to develop their own judgment.
Some of them manage to figure out what is important and why ... but
some of them don't.

In any case, all that is only tangentially connected to the main issue,
namely the fact that school cannot possibly teach anyone more than a
tiny percentage of what they need to know. The rest they will have to
teach themselves. Dealing with this fact must be considered central
to any educational effort, whether or not it explicitly appears on the
syllabus. IMHO the most important goal of the education system is to
get students to love learning. This includes getting them to the point
where they know how teach themselves and are motivated to do so.

Obviously state-wide high-stakes mile-wide-inch-deep multiple-guess
tests are quite unhelpful in advancing this goal. Why do we tolerate
this?

Some tiny percentage of the "inquiry learning" literature talks about
self-assessment, but usually it is only a tactic ... little more than
an afterthought ... not a major strategy, let alone an end unto itself.

Bottom line: Love of learning. Knowing /how/ to learn. Self-awareness.
Judgment. My gut tells me we can do better in this area. Some of it
seems blindingly obvious, but some of it remains very mysterious.
Suggestions, anyone?
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