Re: your mail

[Joseph Bellina <jbellina@saintmarys.edu>]

I seems to me that in a sense we always teach a lie, since we don't have 
the truth.  Given that, as long as you help students come to a new 
understanding, you have helped them learn.  I, for example, spend weeks 
with my liberal arts students living in a geocentric world, so that they 
will better understand the scientific and non-scientific issues and 
experiences associated with the Copernican revolution.

cheers

On Sun, 8 Sep 1996 
djhamil@teleport.com wrote:

> Subject:     Re: telling them lies
> Sent:        9/7/96 9:47 AM
> To:          phys-l@atlantis.cc.uwf.edu
>
> > I see. Tell them a lie, then tell them you lied. Why would that be good?
> > I guess you could recycle books that taught the caloric model, but I can
> > think of no other advantage.
> >
> > Piaget knew how to deal with concepts that were inately abstract. You
> > wait until the subject is sufficiently mature to absorb thems such.
> >
> > Leigh
>
> I take exception to this comment in two respects, both stemming from my 
> commitment to constructivism - the idea that students actively construct 
> new understandings when they learn.  Firstly, the characterization that 
> students "absorb" concepts is dangerous.  It implies that all we have to 
> do to teach them is to tell them the right stuff.  If they are 
> sufficiently mature, then they will learn it.  
>
> Secondly, since the raw materials for a student's construction of new 
> knowledge are her old knowledge and the sense she makes of the teacher's 
> instruction, the advantage of teaching a caloric model of heat may be 
> that it is an easier construction to make.  Then, having learned a 
> conception of heat as a fluid, she can begin to construct a more fruitful 
> conception including the concepts of internal energy, heating as an 
> energy transfer, etc.  John Clements has published extensively on the 
> idea of using such "bridging analogies" in the teaching of physics.  The 
> idea is that we ask too much of students when we expect them to construct 
> a fully accepted scientific conception from the type of knowledge they 
> are likely to bring with them.  The leap is too large.
>
> If you are worried about the ethics of teaching a concept that you know 
> to be "wrong" (no longer accepted), it is an easy matter to tell the 
> students up front that this is what you are doing.  I find that this 
> approach works well with my HS students - I've an idea that college 
> physics students would also accept it if they were approached in the 
> right way.  (I tell my students that we will be approaching the subject 
> from a historical perspective and that, in order to fully appreciate the 
> new concepts, they must know something about the problems that were 
> solved by the devlopment of the ideas.)
>
> Dave
>
> David J. Hamilton, Ed.D.                    "And gladly wolde he lerne,
> Franklin HS, Portland, OR                    and gladly teche."
> djhamil@teleport.com                          Geoffrey Chaucer