Re: What Does the FCI Tell Us?

[Larry Woolf <larry.woolf@GAT.COM>]

At 11:42 5/11/01 -0700, Richard Hake wrote:
> "a. Interactive Engagement (IE) methods as those designed at least in
> part to promote conceptual understanding through interactive
> engagement of students in heads-on (always) and hands-on (usually)
> activities which yield immediate feedback through discussion with
> peers and/or instructors...

brian whatcott wrote:
"Oh alright! So (let us suppose) I am a fresh teacher willing to
suppose that you are not lying, you are not gravely mistaken,
and if I interact with students in ploughing up the study topics
so that they will know immediately if their grasp is mistaken,
yet are not abashed to display their sometimes mistaken ideas
by heavy handed contradiction ex cathedra, then they will likely
shine in the course work in the final analysis.
 Why wouldn't I adopt this approach?
Why wouldn't everybody adopt this approach?
Possibilities:
1) It's an educational recipe of the month. Old hands have
done that and been there, and over again, and profited not?
2) It's an uneven energy balance: if I give 200% effort,
the students do 20% better. I certainly will not walk into
that kind of contract, will I?
10 students at 120% = 200 points cumulative surplus versus
1 instructor at 100 points deficit. This looks like the
Tragedy of the Commons, and the instructor/commons is getting
downtrodden by the students/cattle.
3) Engagement is a personal loss of privacy. Consciousness to the
demands of all comers means no lectures on autopilot.
4) What I don't know is much more visible if I am not the one
choosing the topic of conversation. Dangerous. Uncomfortable?"


It should be noted that the interactive engagement approach has been adopted
by thousands of elementary school teachers  who are using NSF-developed
hands-on science programs such as FOSS (Full Option Science System -
Lawrence Hall of Science) and STC (Science and Technology for Children -
NSRC).
See if your local elementary school uses any of these programs - take a look
at them, see how they work, talk to the teachers about them. The NSF
originally targeted elementary school programs because elementary school
teachers are much more likely to try new approaches than high school
teachers.  (If you've never played "The Change Game" I highly recommend you
try it.) Middle school programs have been developed (FOSS, STC among others)
and a number of high school programs have been developed (Active Physics) or
are under development.

Why do teachers adopt this approach?  The APS education outreach department
has been doing workshops around the country for elementary school teachers.
They show that these programs meet the goals that teachers themselves set
for the science they want to teach, the science they can teach and the
science they want their students to learn.  The workshops provide
information on professional development, materials centers, assessment and
how to build community and administrative support.

Here's part of a vugraph they use:
"It is generally recognized that all children need to acquire what is
referred to as science literacy:
Knowledge of essential areas of science
Ability to observe and record data
Ability to manipulate data in meaningful ways
Ability to access other information
Ability to draw defendable conclusions from data and other information
Ability to communicate one's findings to others
These skills are best learned in an active learning environment, where
student inquiry is a major driver and where the teacher acts more as a
facilitator to student learning."

I would also recommend looking at the FOSS middle school program to see how
more advanced concepts are presented.  I was the technical reviewer for the
FOSS electronics unit - it's quite challenging for middle school teachers
and students.

Finally I would offer the observation that, in industry, we learn constantly
in an interactive engagement model that is pretty much as described above.
I have learned little in my work by listening to a lecture - all my learning
is done in an active environment.  I must learn because they are always
problems to solve that require new learning.  If I stop learning, I rapidly
become unemployable.

Larry Woolf