Re: Supporting vs stifling curiosity

[Tim Burgess <tburgess@JAGUAR1.USOUTHAL.EDU>]

Rick,
   Negative can lead to positive?

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Rick Tarara wrote:
> I'll be more negative ;-).  'Active Engagement' is not the end-all solution
> to everything not understood.  Sometimes we _really_ do need to go 'look it
> up', to read the correct information, and then to THINK ABOUT IT--OK that's
> .......prepare people to really be teachers.  How to deal with
> informational/conceptual disagreements with your students is, I suspect,
> seldom if ever dealt with.
   One of the great things about implementing "Active Engagement" is that
one learns how to handle "disagreements with your students"(and among
students) through questioning and/or testing of ideas.
   Certainly the PRISMS & Modeling programs both emphasize intellectual
engagement in ways that I never did experience in my
secondary or undergraduate science classrooms.  I think they can be very
helpful to teachers well founded and not so well founded in the content
knowledge of Physics.
  Thanks for your post Rebel Ed. How well my students do on standardized
test, whether I like it or not, is the most important feature of my
impact for my immediate superiors. It is almost schizophenic how I agree
with you but am measured by those blasted tests.

Tim