[Phys-L] Re: student mathematical capability

[Peter Schoch <pschoch@NAC.NET>]

I can add to this that at our CC, we are currently in the third year
of running a "Center for the Effective Teaching of Mathematics" for
K-8 teachers!  Many of the 2- 6 grade teachers are so overwhelmed
teaching everything under the sun that math suffers.  Also, since
most of them are math-phobic to one degree or another, this
exacerbates the problem.

There is nothing more frightening than watching a room full of 5th
grade teachers NOT be able to solve a simple fractions problem!  When
posed with a word problem, I thought some would flee in terror,
exclaiming that they never liked or understood those in school.
After three 8 hour long sessions, the facilitator reports that most
feel reasonably sure of the basic concepts and could teach them;
however, none would say they are comfortable enough to teach a word
problem.

If they don't get it, they can't give it to the students; thus, the
cycle continues.  We definitely need to fix the system at multiple
levels.  Everyone just needs to realize how much it is going to take
to do it effectively, and then a commitment needs to be made and
maintained for the effort.

Peter Schoch



On Sep 14, 2005, at 4:41 PM, Rick Tarara wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John M Clement" <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>
>
> > Basically math is taught as an abstract subject with very little
> > physical connection.  I habitually hear from the math teachers "Why
> > didn't they understand it after I told them?"  They never seem to get
> > the connection between telling and not understanding.
>
> Most definitely!  It seems that from elementary school on, far too
> many math
> teacher religiously avoid the 'word problems' in their books.
> Anecdote
> time:  I recall that a bunch of us physics majors were taking a linear
> algebra course as sophomores, and well into the course we asked the
> prof if
> he could provide any practical examples of what we were doing (matrix
> algebra at the time).  He really couldn't!
>
> These problems are almost as bad with our calculus level students--
> who at
> least are reasonably good at doing the algebra, but who struggle
> mightily
> with setting up 'real world' problems and _really_ have trouble
> setting up
> anything that requires the Calculus.  Oh, they can do integrals,
> they just
> can't set up one for a given physical situation--at least not early
> in the
> course.  We work very hard at that kind of thing.  We also use
> numerical
> methods (spreadsheets) to approach more complex problems, trying to
> break
> the physics down into simplified chunks that can be calculated in a
> straight
> forward manner.  We just started this where we first try to
> calculate the
> time and speed of a bowling ball dropped from 100km above the
> earth.  Step
> 1:  No air resistance but 'g' as a function of height.  Step 2:
> Add in air
> resistance, but with a constant 'b' factor, but playing with the 'v'
> dependence.  Step 3: Use a linear dependency for the air density and
> calculate 'b' as a function of height.  Later we collect data from
> dropping
> a large, light ball and model it using the results obtained from
> the earlier
> spreadsheets.
>
> In the liberal arts courses, the problem is ALSO often the fact
> that we have
> 3rd and 4th year students who haven't seen or used geometry for 6
> years nor
> algebra for 3-4 years.  Of course, algebraic ratios are a mystery
> to almost
> all students at all levels!  ;-(
>
> Rick
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