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Re: [Phys-L] [SPAM] Re: [SPAM] Re: critical thinking exercise : DCcircuits

This WAS at a private school. The DI wanted to micromanage the courses.
Private schools are doing the same things as public schools, and a metastudy
showed that on the average they were no better than public schools.
Remember that at private schools the parents often want good grades for
their money! And at private schools they are under fewer state restrictions
so they can get away with more. Administrators are the same in most
institutions. Some are good, and some are bad. Private schools are now
businesses.

The Benezit study was first implemented in the schools on the other side of
the tracks, but when implemented in the so called good schools, the parents
revolted and got superintendent Benezit terminated without regard to his
evidence that his methods were producing superior thinking in students. The
experiment didn't fail; It was terminated. This is the fate of a lot of
successful innovations.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Wow! I can't relate to this at all since I'm at a private
school. For this and many other reasons, I could/would never
teach in a public school (for any amount of money).


Unfortunately many schools mandate the books. The director of
instruction in the school I was at not only insisted that I have a
book, but made me change the book from the one I wanted to something
else. Actually that is when I ended up leaving. Minds on
Physics is a
book you can lean on because it has activities and resembles a
workbook, but it has condensed readings in the back which do
not take
much time. Basically the students were assigned a short
reading each
class period which was tightly coordinated with the activities which
were done in class.

But students complained it was not a "real" book. Never
mind that they
won't crack open real books except to do the simplistic back
of chapter
homework. MOP by contrast was heavily used in class. I refuse to
assign back of chapter work as it is all available on the web and
sometimes for free. MOP activities were often finished at
home, but a
lot of them were done in class, along with the various labs.

The DI at my school even insisted on a computer science book when I
suggested a very good free online one. After all that would
be ideal
for CS. Then she asked for my recommendation of a CS book
when I had
full time physics and no more CS classes. But I could not recommend
any of them, so she picked the hardest one that was
unreadable by the
students. Then she was intending to teach psychology, but tried to
read the book, and couldn't understand it, so she hired
someone else to
teach it from the same book.
How could she expect the students to use the book if she couldn't.

The community college that I teach at part time has a
mandated book and
I have no input!!! I am not "allowed" to recommend places
where they
can get it much more cheaply than the campus store. I always
coordinate readings with what we do in class, but never take
problems
from it. Instead I put HW on the private course web site.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Very interesting. I don't use books any more in my (high
school) classes.
They are not written for students to understand and are way too
encyclopedic (and expensive).
And students have no time to read them with all the other
(home)work
they have to do.
I use my own notes to teach the ten topics I get to each year.
Nothing beats an engaging physics teacher in class to make physics
come alive.





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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@phys-l.org
http://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l