Re: unexpected obstacles

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

> I would like to begin by thanking everyone who has shared their
> experiences in this area. Until now, I thought I was in a unique
> situation. A parent has expressed "deep concern" that I have the temerity
> to ask questions on a test that are not identical to those in the homework
> or examples done in class. It is "unreasonable" of me to expect their
> child to be able to do a problem they have not seen before. A biology
> teacher here was asked to provide a "study guide" by a parent. The guide
> was to include only those vocabulary words which will be on the test as
> the girl should not have to "waste her time" learning things that will not
> be on the test. Fortunatly, one of our administrators is an ex science
> teacher and so far the administration has backed us.

I think that the idea that problems should not be identical to those in
class is the goal of every science and math teacher.  However, this is only
possible when the proper teaching is employed.  Traditional teaching,
especially in math, concentrates on teaching specific steps to do problems.
Students are taught an algorithm that will work with one particular problem,
and they fail to understand the algorithm.  Research has shown that when
this is done, the students are unable to apply the algorithm to related but
different problems.  This is true even when students are also taught to
understand the problem.  However, when students generate the specific
algorithm and understanding is emphasized, they can bridge the learning to
other situations.

While I have little sympathy for the parent who wants to know the content of
the tests, I know of teachers who literally give the students exactly what
information is going to be on the test.  Indeed this was done in a class
that I was teaching.  Essentially it was dept. policy to tell the students
what was on the district wide essential elements test before the students
took it.  They didn't tell them exactly what the questions were, but it was
so close as to be nearly the same.  Presumably one could do this with the
FCI if you cared to get good scores dishonestly.  Parents have become aware
of this tactic and now want their children to get it routinely.
Incidentally this happens when teachers are put under extreme pressure by
high stakes testing or to have a high passing rate no matter what.

As far as vocabulary words are concerned, I would assume that part of the
test was specifically on vocabulary.  This particular strategy is what I
would call "virtual education".  It looks like the students are learning,
but usually they can not read a passage involving the vocabulary and
understand it.  In other words vocab. is useless unless it can be used.  A
simple example of this is when I questioned a student why "plants had
flowers".  He mentioned stamens and pistils, but completely was at a loss to
tell me what the plants used them for.  The idea that this was their means
of plant sex or reproduction had been totally lost.  On the other hand he
had linked the words stamen and pistil with flower.  Interestingly this is
also an example of how lower level thinkers can easily grasp descriptive
concepts like flowers have stamens and pistils, while not grasping the
unseen consequences.

> On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Scott Goelzer wrote:
> <snip>
> > had factions in the school, jocks, brains, druggies, kikkers, etc). The
> > jocks were stereotypically non-academic. No more - my best students are
> > now called scholar- athletes. These kids can manage all of their school
> > work and sports. Why? Sports is now the last place a teacher can say to
> > a child 'You lost, your performance was terrible - you will practice
> > harder or sit on the bench' and be absolute. Parents will accept this
> > behavior from coaches, but not from teachers.
>
> I am glad that this is still the case where you teach. Around here many
> students who are told to sit on the bench transfer to another school to
> get more playing time. We have many  "elite" club teams in soccer
> and basketball and parent's expectations are high when little Suzie enters
> high school. When the state athletic association tried to make
> the transfer
> rules stricter they were met with a lawsuit. Another  lawsuit over playing
> time in a neighboring school last spring led to a coach quitting
> in the middle
> of the season.

The academic equivalent is where the administration allows students to drop
a course after the last drop date, because it would hurt their (self esteem,
GPA, parent giving, ...) [you choose the answer].  I think that the history
of the no pass no play rule in TX would also be very instructive.  It was
fought bitterly by many parents, and now teachers are pressured to pass
athletes as a result.  I had a failing team member removed from my class so
he could not fail and be ineligible.

> > classroom.  The other kids, with inflated self-esteems, view success as
> > a lucky event - often discussions with these kids reveal them to be
> > very fatalistic. They also feel that a grade is a judgment - of
> > themselves as person, not their work. Doesn't make sense, but that's
> > what I get from discussions.
> There is also some evidence that boys and girls respond in different ways
> to failure. "Boys and girls view academic failure very differently. Boys
> often attribute their failures to lack of trying. Girls are more likely to
> attribute their failures to a simple lack of ability" (1) Psychologists
> call this "effort attribution". (2) Since most of the cited studies
> occurred in the 80's it would be interesting to see if a decade of
> "self-esteem" edubabble has resulted in both genders thinking as Scott
> indicates above.

Actually there is a very interesting recent study in middle school that
showed that performance in science was not influenced by the student's
opinion of their ability in the subject.  This seemed to be the same for
boys and girls.  However at the end of course the grade had little effect on
the girl's opinion of their ability, while it did have an effect on the
boy's opinion.  Essentially self-esteem was correlated with better grades,
but not before the fact.  In either case the studies by Joe Redish show that
the vast majority of physics classes cause a decrease in student attitudes.
Essentially conventional physics courses push students to exhibit naive
opinions rather than more expert like opinions.  Workshop Physics was one of
the extremely few exceptions.  Hestene's VASS showed that attitudes are a
fairly good predictor of achievement.  However, both the MPEX and VASS are
not just simple measures of likes or dislikes, but are rather designed to
measure many attitudes, most of which are extremely resistant to change.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX