Re: telling them lies

[Dave Hamilton <djhamil@teleport.com>]

In response to my post, in which I mentioned my commitment to 
constructivism as a reason that I might teach an outdated concept before 
teaching the currently accepted concept, 
Leigh Palmer writes:

> Commitment to a cause is admirable, and it does tell me that I won't
> convert you. Notwithstanding your belief, I have successfully taught
> the concept of entropy to students ready to assimilate it, and they
> did not pick it up elsewhere or arrive at it by the discovery route.
> Telling them first that entropy is a measure of the disorder in a
> system did not make my task easier, I'm absolutely convinced, so don't
> you try to convert me, either. I have a deep commitment to the idea
> of empirical validation.

Well, perhaps commitment was the wrong word because I don't think of 
constructivism as a cause - I meant it as a theoretical commitment, just 
as I am committed to QM (tho' I understand far less about QM than I do 
about constructivism).  :^)

I readily believe that you have successfully taught students as you 
describe.  It's just that my interpretation of what happened is 
different.  I believe that the students had sufficient knowledge to make 
sense of your instruction in the way you intended; therefore, they were 
able to construct an understanding of entropy which is in agreement with 
the current paradigm.  

This sort of meaningful learning can clearly occur in almost any mode of 
instruction:  lecture (with or without demonstration), reading, so-called 
"discovery" lessons, etc.  What matters is that the information is 
presented to students who have not only sufficient mental maturity (as 
implied by your first post), but also sufficient prior knowledge to make 
appropriate sense of the instruction.  Otherwise, a student may look at 
the same evidence which, in your mind, illustrates the concept of entropy 
perfectly, and interpret it in a completely different way (equally 
sensible, but not scientifically acceptable).

BTW - I suspect that what I mean by "constructivism" and what you mean by 
"the discovery route" are completely different things.  I don't expect my 
students to discover Newton's laws, for instance, but I know that, in 
order to learn those laws, the students must construct them (I can't just 
open their heads and pour the knowledge in).  My instructional plan is 
basically to engage my students in activities which, with my 
intervention, lead to the posing of significant questions about motion.  
Then, when I judge that the students are knowledgable enough to make 
sense of the Newtonian paradigm, I simply tell them Newton's laws and 
relate the laws to the experiences which we have been trying to explain.  
There's no discovery here.

In another sense, I guess commitment was the right word, because, as you 
suggest, I am only slightly more likely to be converted away from 
constructivism than I am to be converted away from physics.  Just as I 
have found physics to be a powerful explanatory mechanism for the natural 
world, I find constructivism to be a powerful explanatory mechanism for 
how we learn.  (Of course, the empirical base for constructivism is not 
as time-tested and substantial as the empirical base for physics.) You 
see, I share your commitment to the idea of empirical validation.

I hope my passion on this topic is not coming across as being too 
argumentative.  I am thoroughly enjoying this conversation.

Regards,
Dave

David J. Hamilton, Ed.D.                    "And gladly wolde he lerne,
Franklin HS, Portland, OR                    and gladly teche."
djhamil@teleport.com                          Geoffrey Chaucer