Re: The Benezet-Berman Experiment (not long questions)

["John M. Clement" <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

A typical graduate school education is what most physics education types, including myself had, so don't knock it.  Most physics education researchers have been doing the research on their own.  Have you noticed how many were nuclear or high energy researchers?

Anton Lawson in "Science Teaching and the Development of Thinking" has the test as appendix F.  It is a test designed to evaluate the thinking skills as defined by the psychologist Piaget.  Lawson's book is an excellent explanation of the Learning Cycle which was "invented" by a physicist Robert Karplus.  The book should be available in any good academic library, or it can be ordered from Amazon.

I do not know if Benezit is similar to Waldorff, but the previous post by Richard Hake gives the web site for a copy of the paper: http://wol.ra.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/benezet/  I would recommend reading the paper, but it essentially found that by delaying formal teaching of arithmetic to 6th grade that students had much better ability to do problems, and their ability to do "common sense" problems was superior.  At the same time their math skills were equivalent or better than conventionally taught children.

Part of the education problem is that it is assumed that graduate students and professors automatically have teaching skills.  These skills must be built over a period of time, the same way physics research skills are built, by reading papers, experimenting, thinking, and practicing.  Just as you read physics papers to enhance your physics skills, you need to read education research papers to augment your teaching skills.  I personally think that the physics education research is on the right track, and physics education may become a science ahead of some of the other teaching fields.  But, there is a rich literature that relates to physics teaching in other publications that is seldom cited by many physics education researchers.  Lawson is a biologist, but his ideas are excellent.  While on the subject I can personally also recommend "Really Raising Standards" by Shayer and Adey, and "Instrumental Enrichment" by Reuven Feuerstein.  And last but never least "Teaching Introductory Physics" by Arons.  Finally
for the venturesome look at articles in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, and the articles posted on their website www.narst.org .

John M. Clement

> A couple of questions from an ignorant person of these matters
> (having only
> had a typical physics graduate education).  What is Lawson's "Classroom
> test
> of Scientific Thinking"? and how can one get a copy?
>
> Also, how are the Benezet methods mentioned (also what are they exactly?)
> similar to, related to, some of the Waldorff school methods for grades 1-7
> mathematics teaching?
>
>
> Joel Rauber
> Joel_Rauber@sdstate.edu
>
>
> Only 1/4 of my regular physics students
> > understand ratio and proportion on Lawson's "Classroom test
> > of Scientific
> > Thinking".  They will put the data points on a graph at evenly spaced
> > intervals to produce a straight line, and then adjust the
> > scale so that it
> > is unevenly spaced.