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Re: Thinking Level of students

I think that the problem is well established. I work with HS students,
though in the past I have worked with college students at Duke U, and at
RPI. Some of my Duke students had the same problems that I see in HS.

I do count myself among the number that can teach students to use more
formal reasoning. The methods for doing this are actually quite well known,
and have even been embodied in some programs. Anton Lawson at AZ State does
this in the intro Bio course. His book "Science Teaching and the
Development of Thinking" details the methods. Another program which has a
good track record is "Thinking Science" by Shayer, Adey and Yates. They
detail this program in "Really Raising Standards", and also discuss some
other programs that also seem to work. Has anyone read these books besides
me? They are based on various published papers in reputable peer reviewed
journals.

The test for formal thinking is available in Lawson's book. I get about 1.6
points of rise out of 12 in about 1 semester. This is about 1/2 STD or an
effect size of 0.5. Unfortunately getting big increases requires a large
effort and time. It can not be done in a short time. A fully effective
program will take about 2 years. Again returning to Arons, he points to a
study that achieved 85% formal thinkers by using careful intensive Socratic
questioning. He also points out that this does not seem to work with about
15% of the students.

I suspect some of the reformed or Interactive Engagement programs also
achieve high gains. Currently Anton Lawson achieves about 1 STD gain in the
intro bio course at AZ State. It seems to be possible to improve the
thinking of both HS and college students. The earliest that one can
intervene is in 6th or 7th grade. Indeed, that is probably the best place
to start a cognitive enhancement program aimed at producing formal thinking
skills. Shayer and Adey are doing this in England, and the program results
in markedly higher scores on standardized tests 4 years later. Raising the
thinking skill accelerates learning, and this shows up as a delayed gain
increase, but does not show up as an immediate increase. My data shows that
raising the thinking level actually shows up as a measurable immediate
increase in understanding of physics concepts.

There are still many traditional counselors who consider IQ to be fixed.
The program invented by Reuven Feuerstein in Israel, Instrumental Enrichment
(IE or FIE) have been shown to result in a marked increase on conventional
IQ tests. Anyone who wishes to pursue these ideas would do well to read
Shayer&Adey, Feuerstein, and Piaget. Shayer and Adey base their work on
Piaget's ideas extended by various other researchers like Karplus and
Lawson.

Our schools are part of the problem, because by emphasizing just rote
learning, teachers are unwittingly dumbing the students down. This was
amply illustrated by the Benezit experiment which Richard Hake has
referenced on this list many times.

Really good teachers should know educational psychology as well as the
subject they are teaching. Without pretesting students for these skills,
you really have no idea what you have to work with. Without posttesting you
have no idea how they have improved their thinking skills.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


John:

I really don't want to get into a big argument /discussion about lack of
abstracting in our students. Especially with those whose experience
lies mainly with physicists and physics majors. (Yes, I know, that's
not a sentence.)

Many teachers believe that they can teach students to abstract. I do
not count myself among their number. Shocking as it may be, most
students are intrinsically unable to grasp these relationships.

Wes


-----Original Message-----
From: John S. Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Date: Saturday, September 08, 2001 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: Thinking Level of students


At 12:09 PM 9/8/01 -0700, Wes Davis wrote:
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.

That statement is hard to interpret without some more details, some more
context.

I assume we talking about
A) the basic new moon / 1st quarter / full moon geometry,
as opposed to
B) lunar nodes, pairing of eclipses, and the Saros

Even under this assumption, is the message that:
1) They weren't born knowing it, and can't picture it until
it has been
covered in class?
2) The picture doesn't "stick" even after it has been covered in class
in the usual way?
3) They are intrinsically unable to grasp it, no matter how it is
taught?
4) They can't do it quickly using mental images alone, even
though they
could manage if given more time and/or pencil&paper and/or props to work
with?

Those are very, very different meanings.

======================

I would find meanings (2) and (3) quite shocking. Even meaning (1) would
be alarming. Geometric relationships in general, and the earth/moon/sun
geometry in particular, is commonly introduced in 2nd grade, and students
are expected to (mostly) "get it" by 3rd grade or 4th grade. (You can
confirm this by using google to find a bunch of 3rd-grade syllabuses. I
also checked with someone who teaches 3rd grade and has advanced training
in developmental psychology.)

Meaning (4) would be no surprise -- and no problem.

Bottom line: I don't understand what the point is.....