Constructivist philosophy (was electric charge)

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

I would call Bob Sciamanda's essay a very good explanation of basic
constructivist philosophy.  When applied to education it recognizes that
students construct their versions of reality based up on experience and what
they learn in class.  Along with this idea is the basic recognition that
concepts are constructed rather than being communicated.  One can attempt to
communicate them, but what the student actually does is use the teacher's
messages as part (often a very small part) of the information used to
construct the ideas.

This does not deny the existence of an objective reality, but it puts into
perspective how we understand and communicate that understanding.  As
applied to educating students we must try to understand how the knowledge is
constructed and under what circumstances it is constructed.  PER and other
educational research is actually finding out what is happening so we can
construct testable models of student learning.  These models can then be
used to engineer better student learning.  Some of these models may be
related to various theories proposed by psychologists such as Piaget,
Voygotsky, and Feuerstein, but the theory may not be needed to actually
improve student learning.

This goes far beyond the simple idea proposed by Karl Trappe
"If you view lecture demonstrations (or any other teaching activity)
in that context, then the more students participate in their own
learning process, they more they retain.  Well, duhhh!"

The engagement while certainly a necessary component is far from sufficient.
Using the correct pedagogical ideas sequenced according to the research is
also necessary.  Up to this point education has been assumed to be a
brilliant art, but even the most brilliant lectures and demos failed to
reach the masses and make a lasting impression.  Feinman admitted to his
failure to improve understanding with his own brilliant lectures.  The
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations by Thornton&Sokoloff are very different
in their execution from the normal demonstrations that lecturers are
accustomed to presenting.

Student learning is a very complex system that most people assume they
understand.  In reality up to this point a very simplistic model has been
used for this system.  To become an expert teacher it is necessary to put
into the effort the same amount of effort and training that physicists put
into their own research.  I would say that a good educator must be know the
subject being taught, the available pedagogy, and learning psychology in
depth.  If anyone doubts that great advances are possible, read some of the
work of the Israeli psychologist Reuven Feuerstein.  He has been able to
take children as old as 15 with estimated IQs or 65 and train them to become
normal functioning adults.  He has also taken a group of children 2 years
behind in their schooling and given them enrichment that resulted in an
average score on a general intelligence test when they entered the army.
However the students who did not receive the treatment were distinctly below
average.  This is reported in his book "Instrumental Enrichment", and
mentioned in "Really Raising Standards", Shayer&Adey's survey of cognitive
enhancement methods.  The latter book is very readable and surveys many
methods.

The word model is actually used as the basis for the successful Modeling
curriculum by Hestenes based on the work by Wells.  It uses the idea of
models and explicitly uses the idea that our understanding is a constructed
model of reality.

It may be possible to make demonstrations and lectures more effective, but
when that is done, they may no longer resemble the current format.  Certain
things will be thrown out as ineffective and other things must be included
to be effective.  In addition teachers will need to use evaluations which
can really help them gauge the effects of curriculum change.  This also
means giving up the idea of coverage, and instead use the idea of student
learning as the goal.  We must also give up the idea that concepts which are
obvious to us should be obvious to others, and are easily communicated.
Once we do this we will nurture a real science of learning and teaching.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> We directly know only our perceptions.  From these perceptions we
> construct models of external reality.  These models say more (at least as
> much) about us and our modes of thinking than about the objective reality
> under examination.  We try to make sense ("our" sense) out of these
> perceptions by externalizing substantial entities (objects, things,
> substances) and by positing interactions among these objects.  The
> Newtonian physicist quantifies this model by inventing the quantitative
> concept of "force".  He categorizes and quantifies these forces by
> defining into existence (inventing) quantifiable "properties" which he
> associates with (his model of) an object in order to enable this human
> description in a quantifiably useful and testable way.
>
> In our direct perceptions, objects change their states (kinematical and
> otherwise).  We model these changes as interactions, which we further
> divide into gravitational, electrical, etc and further describe in terms
> of humanly invented properties (charge, mass, etc). Objective reality
> (whatever it may be) knows nothing of this language or of these human
> categorizations and abstractions.
>
> I guess what I want to point out is simply the importantance of realizing
> that this thread is not about external reality - it is about our models of
> external reality - largely an introspective self analysis (a very useful
> exercise).
>
> Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
> Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
> trebor@velocity.net
> http://www.velocity.net/~trebor