Bill I have one query concerning your note of Wed, 11 Feb 1998 00:38:08
-0800 (PST).
You say: "Physics teachers are professional paradigm shifters...they don't
count. [in reference to Frasier's claim about the impossibility of change
in these ideas]" Yet, elsewhere in your note you point out:
"Phys-L is not immune to this sort of thing. Explanation of airfoils.
(The forbidden phrase!) ;) The "shape vs. attack-angle" battle has raged
here on and off for ages. How many have switched sides? How many would
ADMIT to switching sides? I think it would have been easier to convert
the the medieval Church to Heliocentrism."
If we add the evidence that little or no real conceptual change happens in
well over 90% of the students who experience physics instruction (which
includes nearly all the population of our country at one time or another
somewhere in grades 1 - 16), here is another evidence of non-shift of
paradigm. (..using the term paradigm loosely.)
So if "we" have a hard time changing and we are not particularly successful
in changing the vast majority of our students, in what sense are _we_
"professional paradigm shifters?"
Just wondering... ;^)
Dewey
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper
"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,
1938.
"Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct
of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence."
--E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958.
"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in
There Are No Electrons, 1991.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++