Re: Textbooks

["Donald E. Simanek" <dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu>]

On Fri, 13 Dec 1996, Don Boys wrote:

> A couple of month's back two South Africans wrote an article in The 
> Physics Teacher _Cedric Leder was one author. They talked about
> some very successful use of Hewitt"s Conceptual Physics for
> this course. They did some comparison testing with another 
> class using a popular calc-based text, examining students sometime
> after the completion of the course. The conceputal group did very
> well, much better than the group doing calc-based physics.  I think
> we have to ask do we want to cover material, or give students the
> ability to retain something. 

I don't have the details of this study in front of me. But I gave up
reading such studies long ago. The reason is that I can't imagine, even
in the best circumstances, how one could structure such a study with
results which meant anything.

When you try to compare two quite different approaches, having
different outcome objectives, how can you devise a fair test to compare
relative success? If you give an objective, problem oriented test you'll
be unfair to the insight based group. If you give essay and insight
questions you may penalize the traditional group. What kind of objective
test can compare these different approaches fairly? 

Then one must factor in the "initial enthusiasm effect". This, I
understand, is well known in medical research. Initial reports of the
efficacy of a certain drug or treatment may show, say 50% success. Later
follow up studies and independent studies will, typically show success
rates less than a third as good as the initial studies.

There's also the famous "Hawthorne effect" as well (the original study now
somewhat discredited) in which a group which feels it is getting
something new or special will perform better just because of that
attention given them.

And there's the experimenter effect. The person devising the new approach,
or deeply involved in it, may implement it more effectively than others
who try to copy it ever can. 

How many of these ed-biz studies are blind, or double-blind? The
evlauation instrument for both groups should be constructed by a
disinterested third party, one who doesn't know what was taught in either
section, and doesn't know which students were in which section. And, of
course, the nature and content of the evaluation instrument should not be
known in advance to the teachers of either section.

How may of these 'studies' meet these criteria?

But the best antidote to overenthusiasm about educational innovations is
to look farther back, at the long history of other fads and innovations
which were (initially) considered destined to revolutionize education. 
Notice what happened to *them*? Have we any reason to think the
innovations of today will fare any better?

Remember my maxim: "In education, nothing works if the students don't."

	-- Donald

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Dr. Donald E. Simanek                            Office: 717-893-2079
Prof. of Physics                    Internet: dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu
Lock Haven University, Lock Haven, PA. 17745          CIS: 73147,2166 
Home page: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek            FAX: 717-893-2047
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