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At 22:47 -0500 5/8/04, John Clement wrote:
Well, what evidence is there that modeling mistakes produces betterI am currently reading Rudolf Peierls memoir, "Bird of Passage"
problem solving skills? Feynman certainly had little evidence for
his methods, and he called his lectures failures.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) and this morning I ran
across the following paragraph (pp. 28-29) about his student days in
Munich:
"I also attended lectures in mathematics. I remember particularly
those by Caratheodory, a charming Greek, whose lectures were not very
well organized. On one occasion he came into the lecture room and
said, 'Yesterday I thought of a proof for the theorem I want to prove
today, but on the way to the university I realized that it was
On the other hand, different students learn in different ways, and
not all teaching methods will be effective with all students. It is
probably important for students to have teachers with different
styles, so they can get used to the differences that they will be
forced to accommodate to in their learning careers. But teachers
should be aware of the fact that no one method will be effective with
all their students, and even if one find a method that works well
with more students than others, there will be some quite capable
students who will not respond to that method and may not do as well
as they could with a different approach.
I look forward to the reactions of the varied personalities resident
on this list.
Hugh