Re: [Phys-l] Lack of rigor: low increase in crit. thinking

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

Something I can agree with.  There are studies that show that homework is
not nearly as effective as many think, because students often practice wrong
things.

My original comments were in regards to:
http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=363377354&ids=0Ud34Ne3cPc3
sIc3wUc3oVcj0Tb3sVdjsMe34MdOMTej4TdP4Pc3sId3kPdPsPcPoP&aag=true&freq=weekly&
trk=eml-tod-b-ttle-68&ut=1vxG-3vxiDv4U1

This particular article did not show that student thinking had decreased,
and it did not give evidence that their remedies were effective.  Also it
did not show that the increase in student thinking was greater in previous
years, say 30 to 50 years ago.  Indeed we have no direct evidence there.

The big problem is that students are actually entering with lower thinking
skills.  Michael Shayer has shown that students in the UK are 2 grades lower
in thinking than they were over 30 years ago.  I have been told by someone
who has equivalent data for the US that this is also happening in the US.
So if the thinking skills are mismatched to the course, the students can not
make progress.

As to the comment about age 26, that is merely the age at which certain
types of thinking seem to come into their own and the age at which
responsibility seems to maximize.  There are a number of ages at which there
are windows of opportunity to improve thinking by taking advantage of the
rapid brain growth.  Sadly the one at age 10+ is the middle school age which
is not being properly utilized.  This is the age at which proportional
reasoning become possible, but without the exposure to the necessary tasks,
it does not click in.  This is the age targeted by Thinking Science.  There
is also a window at age 18, and a big one at K/1st grade.  But if students
are just given memorization tasks rather than thinking tasks at those ages,
they lose out.  It is possible to make gains later, but it seems to be
harder to do this.  But even after 26 it is possible to improve thinking.

How you get students to do more productive thinking is very unlikely to
happen just by getting rid of grade inflation or by piling on more work.  If
your school gets a reputation for having lower grades and more failures,
students may just decide to apply to easier schools.  Students have been
known to pick courses according to how easily the professor grades.  But if
students value the learning more, this may not be a problem.  So how do you
get them to value learning when you have a political climate where learning
and education is denigrated?

One can improve the thinking of students without just piling on extra work,
and there is evidence from PER that this can happen.  As I have already
pointed out one can improve things like proportional reasoning and
sequential reasoning substantially in existing courses, but it requires
doing things other than just concentrating on the subject material.  Shayer
& Adey showed this with their development of Thinking Science.

As to the word "rigor" it is usually a code word for more difficult, and
more work piled on.  This is the idea behind the TX mandate that all
students take 4 years of math so they get more rigorous math courses.  So
rather than matching the students to courses that will improve their
thinking skills, they are just mainstreamed into higher level courses.  The
result has been predictable.  I have been told by a math teacher that they
have dropped a lot of things out of the higher level math courses because
the students can't handle them.  This is exactly what I have predicted.  So
I usually see red when I see the word "rigor".  You are free to define it as
you wish, but I know how it us usually used.

As to the use of the word "hard", one dictionary said "difficult to do or
accomplish; fatiguing; troublesome: a hard task".  This was just one of many
possibilities found by this "boring pedantic" after looking it up.  So hard
and difficult can by synonyms in English where we do not have any language
police.

So smarter research based teaching is what is needed to improve student
thinking.  But this may mean doing non traditional things, or traditional
things in a completely different way.  While a writing course may be
effective in increasing English language skills, just learning good
communication may be even more effective.  Shayer & Adey did not infuse a
large amount of writing into student activities in Thinking Science.  But
they did infuse specific thinking strategies, and asked question much like
the ones that are asked in materials like Real Time Physics.  But the goal
of TS was not to improve specific curriculum understanding, but rather to
improve thinking skills.  As a result the students went up in science, math,
and English on standardized exams.

Good writing can either be "nice" or it can be "informed", and these are two
completely different goals.  Having good thinking skills is a prerequisite
to informed writing, but it is not as necessary for entertaining of pleasing
writing.  Look at the private universe video where Harvard and MIT graduates
express themselves very well but completely ignorantly about things like
phases of the moon, the seasons, or where the physical material in a log
came from.

And yes there apparently is some evidence that an intensive writing course
can improve thinking, but that is a rather brute force approach.  The
experience of PER has been that when students are put into a situation where
they interact and discuss ideas, the improve understanding.  So interaction
is one key along with properly constructed research based material.
Solitary work on homework is not nearly as effective for most students.  And
of course there is always the outlier who works alone and is effective.  But
they are rare.

The big problem with piling on extra work is that cheating then becomes more
common and more attractive.  It also takes away the needed time to dream or
ponder things without putting it on paper/computer.  Busywork is the enemy
of thinking.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX



> There is a distinction that needs to be brought into sharper
> focus.  There is a germ of truth in what has been said
> recently, which makes it all the more dangerous.
>   a) It is /partially/ true that time-on-task is one
>    of the things that makes some sort of contribution
>    to learning.
>   b) In any case, even if you think lack of time on
>    task is bad, the converse does not hold!  Time on
>    task is not an end unto itself.  Really really not!
>
> If the time is "merely" being wasted, increasing the time 
> on task will not help at all ... and in fact will hurt, 
> insofar as it takes time away from other more-worthwhile 
> tasks.  Furthermore, all-too-often the time is worse 
> than wasted, as when students learn wrong ideas that 
> will need to be unlearned later.