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Re: ...yeah, its better to get the students "prepped" for a test they haveto take than for them not to



----- Original Message -----
From: "Barlow Newbolt" <NewboltW@WLU.EDU>

..yeah, its better to get the students "prepped" for a test they have
to take than for them not to learn anything. What we must not do is
confuse these sessions with a balanced presentation of the intellectual
content of some subject. And we must not use the scores to evaluate the
knowledge of the student nor the effectiveness of the teaching.
WBN

Barlow Newbolt

Exactly! This is why I worry about the reliance on the FCI (Force Concept
Inventory) test to prove anything and everything about Physics Education
Research.

Rick

I'm wondering why the FCI and PER have anything to do with Barlow's
comment. The push for standards and testing requirements has not been
influenced in the slightest by any work I know of in PER, except for lip
service paid here and there. Standards and testing expectations seem
primarily driven by politics from forces outside education.

Be that as it may, there are many in PER who do not rely on the FCI to
decide what they think about the state of student understanding. If you
look at the ratio of papers involving the use of the FCI to the total
number of papers published reporting on student conceptions, you will find
it a small percentage. There are those who use alternatives and those who
started way before the FCI and still don't use it. Hence, there are quite
a number of us who do not rely on the FCI to prove anything and everything
about the effects of physics teaching.

It strikes me that long before the FCI and even currently, not using the
FCI, there is lots of evidence published and reproduceable that change in
understanding is not the general outcome of most physics teaching. Instead
of dumping on the FCI, why not consider the actual choices made on the
assessments, the actual answers students give in interviews, etc.? ...or
come up with alternative assessments and demonstrate that maybe there is an
alternative way to look at things, maybe one that demonstrates that change
in understanding does happen for most students or some other outcome of
value happens?

In case one is interested in sampling the waters on this one can consult
the bibliography established in the field. A new edition of a bibliography
in the field of student conceptions is supposed to be on its way, but the
last edition easily available has 4500 entries. It can be downloaded from:
ftp://physlrnr.boisestate.edu/plrserve/pub/physlrnr Click on the files
"plr11" & "plr12".

Dewey


(Please note domain "idbsu" is no longer valid.)
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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned." --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.
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