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Re: [Phys-L] Indicators of quality teaching (Was:MOOC:EdxOffers Mechanics course by Prof.Walter Lewin)



NICE!!!

John Caranci
OISE Physics Teaching Instructor

On 2013-06-24, at 9:50 AM, John Denker <jsd@av8n.com> wrote:

It has been known for a while now -- almost 2500 years if not more --
that there is a difference between an animal and the /shadow/ of the
animal. There is a difference between a chair and the /shadow/ of
the chair.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html

Sometimes you can indirectly measure some properties of the chair
by measuring the shadow ... but only /some/ properties ... and more
importantly, the chair controls the shadow, not vice versa. If you
try to grab the shadow, you get nothing.

The FCI is not the goal. It is only the tiniest part of a shadow.
The SAT is a slightly larger partial shadow. The more effort you
devote to grabbing the shadow, the worse off you are.


On 06/24/2013 04:56 AM, Philip Keller wrote:
If I am not giving the FCI, then I base my decisions about how to
teach on my own beliefs and judgments about what "works" -- what
supports my personal vision of what it means to teach and learn
physics. But if I give the FCI, and I accept that gain on that test
is a referendum on my teaching, then I start to base my decisions
about how to teach on what I believe will raise those scores. Now, I
am just one little high school physics teacher. Maybe my beliefs,
judgments and "vision" are not so hot. But are they a better or
worse guidepost than the FCI gain?

Teacher's judgment is generally better. Usually much better.

Of course you can find exceptions. If you look around, you can
find some teacher whose judgment is so messed up that focusing on
a multiple-guess test would be an improvement. However,
a) That is rare. We are talking about the bottom 1% or so.
b) A teacher who is that messed up is easy to detect. The
idea of using a standardized test to detect the bottom 1% is
the sort of thing that gives brain-dead bureaucracy a bad name.
Focusing on the bottom 1% in such a way as to ruin the lives
of the other 99% is sheer madness.

I have not yet used the FCI. Was
planning on starting next fall. So I may find that my approach will
fail. But even if it "succeeds" -- produces gain -- I don't know if
that's a good thing.

We agree that FCI gain is not necessarily a good thing. FCI
gain is /not/ the definition of meaningful success. It must
never be used as an "indicator of quality teaching".

As a separate matter: In the PER literature, people brag
about achieving an FCI gain on the order of 0.5, which is
pathetic, given that it is basically a trivia test.

This is not the SAT, where the higher number is
all you want.

No! A high SAT number is not all you want!

The SAT is more like the FCI than not. The FCI is a trivia test,
and the SAT is a somewhat longer and more detailed trivia test.

Be careful what you test for; you might get it. When teachers
start believing that trivia-test scores are "all you want", it
trivializes the entire educational system.

Explain this to your students, in school ... and (!) in the SAT
prep program. Explain it to parents and everybody else, too.
Teach them to grab for the chair, not the shadow.

a) If you control the chair, you can control the shadow,
b) but not vice versa.

a) If you learn how to learn and to think, it will improve
your test scores,
b) but if you cram for the test, even if it improves your
test scores, it will not improve your ability to learn or
to think, or to do anything the least bit worthwhile.

This analogy works on another level: On a cloudy day, the chair
might not cast a shadow at all, but that's OK, because the chair
is what you wanted anyway. I know lots of verrrry smart people
who got mediocre-to-poor scores on the SAT and GRE. The guys who
sell standardized tests pretend that's not possible, but they're
lying. Among many others, I'm thinking of one guy who applied to
several graduate schools but wasn't admitted, on account of his
lousy GRE scores. So instead he worked for me for a while, and
then started his own high-tech company. He now has enough money
to /buy/ several of the schools that didn't admit him.

I've seen the opposite of this, too, on many many occasions:
Somebody crams for the SAT and gets admitted to a good college
on the basis of those SAT scores. When they get to college,
they crash and burn, because they don't have the the requisite
learning skills and thinking skills.

BTW the same logic applies also to grades, not just to SAT
scores. There are lots of situations where grades are a
perverse incentive, in the sense that choices that lead to
a better education produce a worse GPA and vice versa.

"Quality teaching" teaches people to grab for the chair, not
for the shadow.
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