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Re: [Phys-L] ill-posed questions; was: potatoes



Actually reasoning skills should be taught separately, or else they become
particularized to the subject and will not be practiced during other
subjects. This is what Reuven Feuerstein does, and also Shayer & Adey.
Specifically the Feuerstein "Instrumental Enrichment" is given as a pull out
course and it works well. Similarly "Thinking Science" by Shayer, Adey, &
Yates is separated from the curriculum. Students are told during these
lessons that these are NOT tested curriculum but rather general thinking
skills designed to help them in all subjects. This progrm devotes 70min
every 2 weeks for 2 years in middle school. The result is a large increase
on the English national exam several years later. It does not have an
immediate effect on curriculum based assessments, but rather accelerates
students so they do better with the curriculum. It is "cognitive
acceleration". There is a companion intervention "Thinking Maths", also out
of Kings College.

To a certain extent you can promote general reasoning rather than particular
by talking about this when some of the reasoning skills are encountered.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX



The International Baccalaureate curriculum has a separate
course on Theory of Knowledge (ToK) ... which is IMHO a
tremendous mistake. Reasoning is not something you can
sprinkle on afterwards, like powdered sugar on a donut; it
has to be baked in, like the carrots in carrot cake.
This starts in first grade, with basic principles such as
CHECK THE WORK, and learning to ask "Do you think that big
cat is telling the truth?"

Reasoning should be baked into every course, not just
physics, but especially physics. Somehow the physics teacher
is expected to teach reasoning plus remedial math plus
technical writing plus all the physics. It's not fair, but
we're stuck with it.