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Re: [Phys-l] Unit Conversions (was Mass and Energy)



No, it is not psycho-babble. If you don't understand the terminology, then
it will seem like babble. This same thing happens when students encounter
physics terminology. They think they understand, but they don't.

Let us take the term "formal operational". Piaget applied this to students
who pass certain tests and thought that they were capable of formal
reasoning. Actually it just indicates a general level of achievement in
reasoning and corresponds to what Arons would call the necessary precursors
to being able to understand physics. I use it in the latter sense because
even when students test at this level, they still use incorrect reasoning
upon occasion. One needs a term to describe this "state" of learning.
There is also the problem that terminology changes. This happens a bit more
slowly in physics except for new coined terms. But even in physics one
finds that terms shift and some disappear. Dynes and ergs are now gone, but
sometimes dynes still appears on old equipment.

There are many terms which are used in education that the science educators
in post-secondary education are completely ignorant of. Learning these
terms is necessary to rational discourse in education. There is a large
amount of science education research which is based upon hard tests and
there are methods of teaching which improve the results on these tests.
There are also case studies which attempt to gauge things which are harder
to test, and there are also studies which measure things like student
responses to situations. All of these then are combined to form a picture
of what is going on in the classroom and to enable the researchers to make
changes.

Science education research and science education engineering are actually
much more difficult and involve many more variables than nuclear physics. I
would call it engineering when the result is a change in teaching methods,
and just research when it involves just finding a result. Richard Hake
would totally second this sentiment.

Now as to student responsibility, there is certainly a need for that. But
the reality is that the level of thinking has not gone up in students in the
US over the past 50 years as judged by a Piagetian test. Now as judged by
IQ tests, there is a increase, but that is disguised by periodically
renormalizing the average score. In some countries there is an accelerated
increase in student thinking. Holland is one such country. We now have
evidence that it is possible to achieve dramatically better teaching, and to
increase scores on a Piagetian test dramatically. Incidentally the latter
correlates with an increase in IQ whatever that means. Again for an
excellent reference the books by Shayer & Adey are written by scientists,
but are designed to be easy to read. I doubt that anyone on this list would
have difficulty with them. But also the evidence is very firm and
convincing to any scientist.

Now as to the NCLB, what does it do? It puts sole responsibility on the
teachers and administrators. In reality of course, students and parents are
also responsible. I am currently under the gun because enough of my
students have said that they learned nothing in my class that the admin. Is
upset. I have evaluations that show the opposite, but who cares about that
sort of thing. Essentially private schools are now often just concerned
with the bottom line financially and have lost sight of education. So the
blame game goes on. I hit the students hard in certain ways, and they rebel
and complain to the administration. They look at the top student's
complaints, but ignore the fact that she scored 98% on the FMCE. She didn't
like the learning, but it worked extremely well. This is like having a
patient complain that they didn't like the fact that the injections hurt,
despite the fact that the cancer was cured. At present the implementation
of NCLB in TX is driving competent experienced teachers out of the schools.
So one does not need lawyers or NCLB to implement stupid policies.
Capitalism and the ENRON philosophy of keeping up appearances has done the
job quite nicely.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

)

Jack,

It is all the psycho-babble that seems to scream 'stupidity'. I am much
more comfortable with 'ignorance', but an ignorance that comes partly from
poor preparation, but also from lack of intellectual curiosity and more
importantly, a lack of intellectual honesty on the part of students.

IMO, we can largely thank the lawyers (sorry) and the psychologists of the
past few decades for removing the responsibility of the individual from
the
social equation. In our cases, there IS a responsibility on the students
not just to go through the motions in our educational system, but to
actually engage their brains, to seriously try and understand the
material.
High school students who think they live inside the earth does not strike
me as any kind on conceptual problem--it is rather pure ignorance which
almost has to be the fault of the students as I can't imagine that any
state curriculum doesn't deal with this kind of basic knowledge.

While everyone wants to bitch about NCLB, the number one fault I would
place on the whole enterprise is that it places almost zero responsibility
on the students and consequently almost zero consequences upon them for
what must be accepted as a personal responsibility--to become educated
citizens of the country/world.

Rick


[Original Message]
From: Jack Uretsky <jlu@hep.anl.gov>
To: <rbtarara@sprynet.com>; Forum for Physics Educators
<phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Date: 5/27/2006 1:33:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Unit Conversions (was Mass and Energy)

Hi all-
Reading Rick's post, I'm willing to be $0.50 with anybody on the
list that he hasn't read, or at least has forgotten, the material in the
Introduction and Chapter 1 of Aronss' book <A Guide to the Teaching
...>.
Also, I think it unwise to confuse stupdity with ignorance.
Regards,
Jack



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