Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Is competence in physics as a requirement for teachers of



On Friday, Kyle Forinash said:

I'm not sure. A reasonable model for what we are doing as teachers is that
we act as coaches, mentors, cheerleaders, etc. How many basketball coaches
can actually play basketball? Now coaches do know how to do something and
know things about the game but it is not the same stuff that the player
knows how to do....

Nothing is ever simple, is it? Maybe a basketball coach can't *do* the
basketball things that his or her players can, but the coach presumably
knows more about basketball than any of the players. I have students who
can do the math required to solve physics problems much better than I can,
but I know more about physics than they do and so I have something to offer
them. Some of these students will be far better physicists than I ever will
be, just as some of the players a coach works with will be better players
than the coach ever was, but that doesn't take away from what the coach has
to offer.

In fact, being a super physicist, or a super ball player may actually
detract from the ability to teach (but it doesn't necessarily do so), since
someone who is naturally very good, may not understand what it is like to
not be very good and so be unable to relate to the problems the students or
players are having.

In these discussions, it is easy to forget that knowing a subject does not
necessarily make you a good teacher of the subject, you still have to have
some pedagogical ability. But there are people sho seem to have the knack
of teaching, without ever having been taught it (either that, or they pick
it up very quickly), so one could argue that a person who is knowledgeable
in a subject has a chance to be able to successfully teach the subject (in
addition to learning the subject, the person has had lots of opportunity to
watch teachers trying to teach the subject with more or less success, and
if the student was sufficiently perceptive, could have picked up enough of
the pedagogy to get by, at least for a while). But someone who knows
nothing of a subject, regardless of their ability at pedagogy, is doomed.
They won't be able to answer questions, and it will be obvious to the
students that they don't know the subject.

BTW, while I agree that we act as coaches or mentors to our students, I
have a problem with "cheerleaders." We encourage the students and support
them when they need it, but it seems that that is a far cry from
cheerleading, which, at least in my mind, is more of a mindless urging of
the spectators than the students, and that has no place in teaching.

Hugh


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

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