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Re: What Does TIMSS Teach Us? (Short)



Short attention spans, low frustration levels, poor study skills, poor
reading skills--these are all contributors.
What I especially see is that students don't know how to work without a
structured setting. That is, they will do an assigned paper, will work on a
project, will do homework (if sufficiently structured), but won't read along
in the book, won't work through the notes, won't get together with
classmates to just 'figure out' what's going on. In simple words, we are
getting more and more DEPENDENT learners. I fear that many of the 'new'
pedagogical techniques being pushed just buy into that. We are structuring
their study and learning so much, that I'm worried that they won't have
really 'learned how to learn' and will remain dependent--to their detriment.

Rick

**********************************************
Richard W. Tarara
Associate Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel Rauber" <Joel_Rauber@SDSTATE.EDU>
This is a problem for my students, they don't know how to deal with the
"struggle" and frustration required to do well with Physics and Physics
problems. Their response to the least little bit of frustration tends to
be
a "give up" response. I don't recall this attitude amongst the better
half
of my peer group as a student; we tended to have more of a "damn it, I can
figure this stuff out" attitude. What are other folks perceptions
regarding
this?

Joel Rauber