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Deficient Language Skills (was "An old subject revisited")



Please excuse this cross-pollinating post to discussion lists with archives at:

Math-Teach <http://mathforum.org/epigone/math-teach>,
Phys-L <http://lists.nau.edu/archives/phys-l.html>,
PhysLrnR <http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/physlrnr.html>,
Physhare <http://lists.psu.edu/archives/physhare.html>,
AP-Physics
<http://lyris.collegeboard.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?site=collegeboard&enter=ap-physics>,
POD <http://listserv.nd.edu/archives/pod.html>


In his Phys-L post of 16 Jan 2003 22:26:22-0800 titled "An old
subject revisited," Bernard Cleyet posted excerpts from an article by
Glen Owen (2003) "Daily grunt of families who don't know how to
chat," regarding the deficient language skills of young children.
IMHO, one could make the case that such deficiency is a root cause of
many of the problems in secondary and post-secondary education.

According to the article, Alan Wells, director of the UK's Basic
Skills Agency "set out to investigate why pupils reaching primary
school age had the worst language skills in memory. Research has
shown that in some areas up to half of children aged five lack
linguistic ability."

Wells's agency has pioneered a program in Wales called "Language and
Play," to advise parents how to interact with their children, and he
thinks that introducing it across the country would be a worthwhile
investment.

IMHO, other programs that would be a worthwhile investment in the UK
and other countries, including the U.S., would involve the Benezet
(1935/36) strategy for increasing the linguistic, math, and science
ability of young children, even though the children may come from
families "who don't know how to chat" in English, as was for the case
for many of the students - children of poor immigrant Manchester N.H.
mill workers - in Benezet's experiment.

Quoting the abstract of Mahajan & Hake (2000):

MAHAJAN & HAKE - MAHAJAN & HAKE - MAHAJAN & HAKE - MAHAJAN & HAKE
Should teachers concentrate on critical thinking, estimation,
measurement, and graphing rather than college-clone algorithmic
physics in grades K-12? Thus far physics education research offers
little substantive guidance.

Mathematics education research addressed the mathematics analogue of
this question in the 1930's. Students in Manchester, New Hampshire
were not subjected to arithmetic algorithms until grade 6. In earlier
grades they read, invented, and discussed stories and problems;
estimated lengths, heights, and areas; and enjoyed finding and
interpreting numbers relevant to their lives. In grade 6, with 4
months of formal training, they caught up to the regular students in
algorithmic ability, and were far ahead in general numeracy and in
the verbal, semantic, and problem solving skills they had practiced
for the five years before.

Assessment was both qualitative - e.g., asking 8th grade students to
relate in their own words why it is "that if you have two fractions
with the same numerator, the one with the smaller denominator is the
larger"; and quantitative - e.g., administration of standardized
arithmetic examinations to test and control groups in the 6th grade.
Is it time for a science counterpart of the Benezet/Berman Manchester
experiment of the 1930's?
MAHAJAN & HAKE - MAHAJAN & HAKE - MAHAJAN & HAKE - MAHAJAN & HAKE

Unfortunately, Benezet's (1935/36) ground-breaking work has been
almost totally ignored by the education community. Paraphrasing Lee
Schulman (see Arons 1986): "it seems that in education, the wheel
(more usually the flat tire) must be reinvented every few decades."
There seems to be little effort to build a "community map" [Redish
(1999), Lagemann (2000), Shavelson & Towne (2001)] as in traditional
scientific research.

Appendix II of Mahajan & Hake (2000) gives "References for a
Benezetian overhaul of K-12 science education." Although there
appears to be no single off-the-shelf implementation of Benezet-type
science, perhaps an approximation would be provided by Swartz (1969).
[In Hake (2002a), I note the relevance of Swartz (1969) to the war on
science/math illiteracy.]

Dewey Dykstra (2003) has suggested that the work of Sr. Mary Gertrude
Hennessey (1991, 2002) may be a good example of Benezetian science
instruction.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>

PS: Cleyet inexplicably prefaces his post with "I have pulled a
"Hake'", even though his post is almost totally non-Hakian ;-) . It
is unhelpfully titled, has no reference list, contains only 268
words, gives no opinions on education, is not cross-posted, and
(worst of all) omits the angle brackets <. . .> around URL's - these
preserve the URL's across line breaks.



REFERENCES
Arons, A.B. 1986. "Conceptual Difficulties in Science," in
"Undergraduate Education in Chemistry and Physics: Proceedings of the
Chicago Conferences on Liberal Education," No. 1, edited by R.R. Rice
(Univ. of Chicago), p. 23-32.

Benezet, L.P. 1935/36. "The teaching of arithmetic I, II, III: The
story of an experiment," Journal of the National Education
Association 24(8), 241-244 (1935); 24(9), 301-303 (1935); 25(1), 7-8
(1936); online at the Benezet Centre
<http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/benezet/> (now featuring
photos of Benezet!). See also Mahajan & Hake (2000). For the
relevance of Benezet's work to the current acrimonious Math-Wars
discourse that now dominates Math-Teach see Hake (2001).

Dykstra, D. Private communication of 16 Jan 2003.

Hake, R.R. 2001. "Could the Math Wars End In a Treaty of Benezet?"
post of 3 Dec 2001 to PhysLrR/Math-Teach; online at
<http://www.mathforum.org/epigone/math-teach/yalsnayglix>.

Hake, R.R. 2002a. "Physics First: Opening Battle in the War on
Science/Math Illiteracy?" Submitted to the American Journal of
Physics on 27 June 2002; online as ref. 20 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/>. See also Hake (2002b).

Hake, R.R. 2002b. "Physics First: Precursor to Science/Math Literacy
for All?" Summer 2002 issue of the American Physical Society's "Forum
on Education Newsletter" <http://www.aps.org/units/fed/index.html> /
"Forum newsletters" where "/" means "click on."; also online as ref.
19 at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/>.

Hennessey, M.G. 2002. "The Impact of Instructional Experiences on
Children's Epistemological Development," AAPT Announcer 32(4): 61:
"This presentation discusses the claim that that even elementary
students can make significant progress in developing more
sophisticated epistemology of science, given a sustained science
curriculum that is designed to support students' thinking about
epistemological issues." See also Hewson & Hennesey (1992).

Hennessey, M.G. 1991. Analysis of conceptual change and status change
in sixth graders' concepts of force and motion. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Hewson, P. & M.G. Hennesey. 1992. "Making status explicit: A case
study of conceptual change," in "Research in Physics Learning:
Theoretical Issues and Empirical Studies - Proceedings of an
International Workshop held at the University of Bremen, March 1991,"
ed. by R. Duit, F. Goldberg, and H. Niedderer. Institut fur die
Padagogik der Naturwissenschaften (IPN), pp. 176-187.

Hubisz, J.L. 2001. "Report on a Study of Middle School Physical
Science Texts," Phys. Teach. 39(5): 304-309. The full report is
online at
<http://www.science-house.org/middleschool/reviews/textreview.html>.

Lagemann, E.C. 2000. "An elusive science: the troubling history of
education research." Univ. of Chicago Press.

Owen, G. 2003. "Daily grunt of families who don't know how to chat,"
Times Online (UK), 9 January; online at
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-537234,00.html>.

Redish, E.F. 1999. "Millikan lecture 1998: building a science of
teaching physics." Am. J. Phys. 67(7): 562-573; online at
<http://www.physics.umd.edu/rgroups/ripe/perg/cpt.html>.

Shavelson, R.J. & L. Towne, eds. 2001. "Scientific Research in
Education," National Academy Press; online at
<http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10236.html>.

Swartz, C.E. 1964. "Elementary School Science," Journal of Research
in Science Teaching 2, pp. xx-yy?

Swartz, C.E. 1969. "Measure and Find Out: A Quantitative Approach to
Science." Scott, Foresman and Company. According to the Hubisz (2001)
report (my CAPS): "Clifford E. Swartz, then Director of the National
Science Foundation Workshop on 'Elementary School Science by a
Quantitative Approach,' wrote the three volume 'Measure and Find Out:
A Quantitative Approach to Science'. . . . . THESE BOOKS HAVE WHAT IS
MISSING FROM MOST OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED IN THIS REPORT." See also
Swartz (1964, 1993).

Swartz, C.E. 1993. Editorial: "Standard reaction." Phys. Teach. 31: 334-335.