Re: Discovery Learning and Guided Inquiry (was Re: AP students)

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

I would like to point out that the truism for the lecture method when I went
to school in the 60s was that "The material flowed from the notebook of the
professor to the notebook of the student without going through the mind of
either".  This has not changed.  Only a small fraction of the students find
the lecture beneficial, because they are actively listening, and the
information presented is slightly challenging, but not totally beyond the
student's reference frame.  Unfortunately few students fit this description.

Do other methods take longer?  YES, but the learning is more permanent.  One
thing that came out of the research of Laws, Thornton, and Sokolff is that
when the students engage in the proper tasks that improve understanding, the
scores on a conceptual exam (FCI or FMCE) rise for about 2 weeks after the
tasks.  This is in line with the research of Shayer and Adey in England, who
use conceptual interventions with the aim of improving student thinking
skills.

There are many methods of attacking the problem of inert learning.  One is
the interactive lecture (Mazur-Peer Instruction, Thornton-ILD).  Guided
inquiry labs (Laws et al, Hake) or tutorials (McDermott) are also effective.
Anchor and Bridging anologies seem to be fairly effective (Clement/Camp).
Modeling (Hestenes) and well designed studio courses (Laws) also seem to be
effective.  Both physics education research and science education research
show that the student needs to be adept at representing ideas in 4 ways
(graph, eq., description, picture).  They also need to be able to translate
from one representation to the others.  Conventional problem solving does
not do this.

Is it possible for texts to be constructivist?  YES.  There are several
papers including one by Anton Lawson that show that texts have a beneficial
effect if they are written as a learning cycle.  It is possible to use a
learning cycle in a lecture, but I have never seen that consistently done.
The Mazur method is essentially a variant on the learning cycle.

There is also a body of reasearch that shows that some form of exploration
or inquiry is needed prior to the imparting of information and definition of
terms.  Anton Lawson has a number of papers on these ideas, and his book
"Science Teaching and the Development of Thinking" would be a good place to
start learning more about these ideas.  It may be that a few students come
into class already having done the necessary exploration.  This is usually
due to a life experience, or messing around with things.  A good example of
this is Einstein who gained a lot of experience in the family factory.
Sadly, most students come in without the necessary experience, so we must
find a way of providing it.  Another way of looking at the problem is to
note that robust knowledge has a large number of connections between ideas,
while conventional lectures promote few connectons.

The evidence against the conventional lecture comes from research both
inside and outside physics education research.  Just perusing The Journal of
Research on Science Teaching (JRST) will give you a large number of articles
on the subject.  Another way to find out what is going on, is by
interviewing students.  The more information you get from them, the more you
find out that what they see in a lecture is not what you intended to convey.
Why not just hand them the notes, and use the lecture time for a more useful
purpose.  At least thay way they will have accurate notes!

I would be glad to read any papers that show that lecture results in better
student learning.  It is undeniably a fairly efficient method of
transferring information, but so is a photocopier.  It can be entertaining,
but that is extremely rare.  It can be as energizing as a revival, but
neither usually have a permanent effect on behaviour.

John M. Clement (Not related to John J. Clement reference above)
Houston, TX



> On Tue, 1 May 2001, Mike Ugawa wrote (with subject header "Re: AP
> students") in response to my post:
>
> > I was quoting a phrase as used by Hugh Haskell in a previuos posting,
> > which I included at the beginning of my response. I agree that
> > "constructivist ideas" refers to a theory of how learning occurs, while
> > "guided discovery" is a matter of instructional methodology. If
> I were to
> > have edited the quote, I would might have used something like, "guided
> > discovery and other instructional methods derived from constructivist
> > ideas."
>
> Thanks for clarifying.  I assume your complete sentence would read "guided
> discovery and other instructional methods derived from constructivist
> ideas may not work well for many students."  I'm not sure I agree but I
> suppose it depends on what you mean by "many".  Any specific method may
> not work well for all students, whether or not the method utilizes
> constructivist ideas.  However, my guess is that methods that utilize
> constructivist ideas work for *more* students.
>
> In Mike Ugawa's second response (also with header "Re: AP students") to my
> post:
>
> > The bottom line is that we still learned our physics
> > well, as evidenced by GRE scores, grad school acceptances, successful
> > careers, etc. This is why I wrote that the ability to learn physics well
> > from lecture is, in part, what characterizes physicists (of my era or
> > earlier--I completed my Bachelor's in 1985).
>
> The assumption here appears to be that lecture is a method that does not
> utilize constructivist ideas.  I grant you that many lectures do not
> utilize constructivist ideas but that isn't necessarily the case.  Perhaps
> the lectures worked because they promoted student inquiry.  The problem
> with lecture is not that they cannot be constructivistic but rather that
> there is little opportunity for feedback and thus the student must not
> only be self-motivated but must also be comfortable constructing their
> ideas in a way that matches the way the instructor is presenting the
> material.  I suspect the effectiveness of the lecture breaks down when
> students have experiences and understandings that are diverse (or
> different from the instructor's).
>
> Again, I am no expert in this.  This is just my interpretation of the
> current inquiry in teaching philosophy.  I welcome comments from those
> with more expertise.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> | Robert Cohen               Department of Physics       |
> |                            East Stroudsburg University |
> | bbq@esu.edu                East Stroudsburg, PA  18301 |
> | http://www.esu.edu/~bbq/   (570) 422-3428              |
> ----------------------------------------------------------