Re: [Phys-L] science education articles

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

This is why forums such as this one are invaluable.

People say things here that they can't or won't
publish in the "literature".  Here's an example,
or maybe two examples in one:

On 09/23/2015 11:40 AM, rjensen@ualberta.ca wrote:

> people don't tend to publish negative results. Flipped
> instruction is a current example. Going to conferences, I find many
> people have tried some form of flipped instruction. For most, it fails
> and/or the students revolt. And the event is buried, not published. 

Note that such publication bias makes it impossible
to do a meaningful meta-analysis.

BTW ... I never said the literature was /uniformly/
bad.  I said the signal-to-noise ration was poor.
There are occasional bright spots.  For example, I 
disagree with several parts of the following paper,
but at least it admits that there are validity problems
and biases to worry about:
  http://mazur.harvard.edu/sentFiles/Mazur_424102.pdf


============================

On 09/23/2015 09:26 AM, Joseph Bellina wrote:
> > You have often disparaged PER, but let me suggest that your
> > description below is exactly what PER is about.

I'm having trouble figuring out what that is
supposed to mean.  Here are my best guesses:

1a) If taken literally, it's not true. The idea that:
> > > -- Too little perseverance is bad.
> > > -- Too much perseverance is bad.

 is not "exactly" or even primarily what PER is
 about, as you can verify with a trivial search
 of the literature.
   42,000 hits:
     https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22physics+education+research%22
   90 hits (about 0.2 percent)
     https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q="physics+education+research"+"perseverance";

1b) If taken literally, it's a harsher rebuke of PER
 than anything I ever considered saying.  It's what
 we call damning with faint praise.


2) If the intent was to say that's /part/ of what
 PER is about, then OK, whatever.  That's one small
 chip off the tip of the iceberg of what PER /should/
 be about ... but why mention it?  Insofar as PER 
 handles that chip correctly, that's lovely ... but
 I suggest there might be problems somewhere within
 the other 99.8% of the work ... and chips like this
 aren't going to persuade anybody.


3) If the meaning was something else, I have no
 idea.  I tried my best to figure it out.  Please
 explain.