Re: ?????????

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

> > > I asked, in a Conceptual Science course for non-science majors, "who
> can
> > > explain changing shapes of the moon to a child?". Nobody raised the
> hand.
>
>       I am not at all surprised at this. Because of the nature of testing
> and because of the enormous amount of *information* we think we must impart
> to students, we end up treating students like parrots.  We have students
> name the phases of the moon on a test. Who has time, or will take the time,
> to EXPLAIN or DEMONSTRATE how two spheres revolving around each other
> illuminated by a third, distant sphere interact. What teacher asks a
> student to EXPLAIN  something on a test.
>     Those who promote the teaching of Science primarily  through
> mathematical modelling are responsible for this result. There is no time
> left for physical or conceptual modelling. Only a tiny fraction of 1% of
> people see any meaning in a mathematical model. Yet it is the PRIMARY
> teaching method used in many science courses.
>
> Fred Bucheit
>
> Nothing has meaning except in relation to something else...including phases
> of a moon.

I think you are being too hard on your colleagues. My colleagues and I
routinely ask students to explain why the result they get is as it is, or
to explain a phenomenon without referring to mathematics (explain it so
your grandmother would understand--assuming, of course, that yur
grandmother doesn't have a Ph.D. in physics). As I attend conferences of
physics teachers, I find any number of them who do as I and my colleagues
do. I'm sure that there are many high school science teachers out there who
still give "objective" tests, or problems that require no explanation, but
the dedicated ones certainly try not to. Of course, the habit that school
administrations have of loading up teachers with 120-150 students makes it
very difficult to keep from giving the type of examinations you decry.

What I do observe in attending physics teachers conferences is that most of
the teachers who use multiple choice tests are doing so at the college
level. I suppose most of them are driven by the problem of grading essay
questions written by 500-800 students.

There is more to be said on this topic, but I'll leave it to others.

Hugh

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Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better." So I bought a Macintosh.
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