Thinking Level of students was: World's noise

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

Yes, and if you read Arons you find that most elementary school teachers
operate at the concrete operational level, in the last version of "Teaching
Introductory Physics".

But the good news is that he mentions that you can raise their thinking to
where 85% can use preponderantly formal thinking.  Every physics teacher can
benefit from carefully reading his book.  After reading it you will never
think of teaching as easy work.

I have seen surveys that show that only 30% of students at some universities
achieve the formal level.  This is actually the same as the percentage for
the general population.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


> -----Original Message-----
> From: phys-l@lists.nau.edu: Forum for Physics Educators
> [mailto:PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu]On Behalf Of Wes Davis
> Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2001 2:09 PM
> To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
> Subject: Re: World's noise
>
>
> John Clement writes:
>
> > Since practically all 6th
> > graders are concrete thinkers, they will have much difficulty with
> astronomy
> > results, including the idea of a rotating earth.
>
>
>     Some recent work indicates that more than 50% of today's college
> freshmen
> are operating on the concrete level - they do not abstract.  Work done by
> Jensen,
> et al., indicates that many *never* achieve the abstract operations stage.
>
>     Many - if not most - of my college astronomy students are
> unable to form
> a
> mental picture of the relationship between the earth, sun and moon.
>
>     Wes