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[Physltest] [Phys-L] Re: "Effective" teaching methods



John,

Have you taught elementary-ed majors recently? Joe can better comment, but
this is a strange _group_. You will get a few highly dedicated students who
can be some of the best you see. However, you see more at the other end.
Scarily, many are math-phobic! [I suggest that even at the elementary level
we need to split the curriculum into language arts and math/science with two
different teachers.]

The point here is that a good many of these elementary-ed students/teachers
ARE NOT very far from their students in terms of science understanding.
This then does suggest that what works on them may indeed work well for
their students as well! ;-)

Hope I haven't offended any El-Ed types that might be on the list--of course
you were the dedicated, best in class types (obviously so if you are reading
this list). ;-)

Rick

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Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, Indiana
rtarara@saintmarys.edu
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********************************************************
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Denker" <jsd@AV8N.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 1:31 PM
Subject: Re: "Effective" teaching methods


Joseph Bellina wrote:
Good point. That might also explain why higher grad teachers are more
difficult to convince.

I assume that means "higher grade" -- not "grad" as in graduate
school.

Still, thinking about grad school sheds some side-light on
this already-interesting point. If we consider only certain
higher-grade classes, namely physics majors and grad students,
then arguably in some sense there is nothing the teachers
ought/need to be convinced of, since they are using traditional
methods on a selected subset of students, namely students for
which traditional methods work OK. Proof by construction.

My side-light leaves wide open the question of what methods
to use for non-selective classes (including HS and intro-level
college). Different problems generally call for different
solutions.

The elementary teachers have for the most part
not been successful, or don't think of themselves as successful in
learning science. So when they see they can learn by guided inquiry it
makes a bigger impression than if they had been successful with the
traditional method.
Perhaps it would help to focus more on their misslearning...ie what
flawed
models persisted inspite of their apparent, to them, success.

That's an interesting idea, and I will need to think about
it some more ... but my initial reaction is that it isn't
really the optimal line of attack.

It is easy to say that whatever type of instruction works
on the teachers will work on the students, but I don't
think it's true. Not all teachers are alike, and not all
students are alike. Even more importantly, people don't
have to be the same to get along!

Here's a very short parable:
My five-year-old nephew gave his mother a box of
lollipops for her birthday.

He was using his infantile interpretation of the Golden
Rule: he gave her something _he_ wanted. It was of
course not even remotely what _she_ wanted, but he wasn't
sophisticated to understand the distinction.

In this spirit, I think the sophisticated approach would
be for us to focus primarily and explicitly on what works
for the various types of students. (We _also_ need to
consider what works for the teachers, keeping in mind
that that's not necessarily the same question.)
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