Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] Sir, Can We Do Something Easier?



Hi all-
We learn - and many of us teach - in physics, to proceed step-by-step, dealing with one issue at a time. In polemics, reverse the process.
I responded to Mike's posting on "making physics fun", and gave a couple of examples fun in science. Since the numbeer of students and teachers of physics at Downers Grove South High School are matters of record, as are the subsequent performances of the graduates, this hardly qualifies as "anecdotal evidence'. At any rate, the issue was, making physics fun, and part of my point was that pontificators don't do that.
I don't know whether John is a pontificator, but he raises two other issues extraneous to the one at hand. One is FCI scores, and the other seems to be anecdotal evidence about his experience with his own children. Such evidence would be, it would seem, truly anecdotal, not being part of any records. So, true to John's polemic, let's ignore it.
I question whether FCI scores serve as an efficient proxy for effectiveness of physics teaching. There are no Nobel prizes for high FCI scores. Traditional physics teaching has given us a number of Nobel Laureates of whom three were fellow graduate students - one of the Nobel's was in economics. But maybe looking at Nobel's is a little restrictive. Another possible measure is membership in the National Academy of Sciences. By my not very careful count, a PhD from Princeton's Physics department practically guarantees election to the NAS. As best as I can tell from my own experience (here I wax anecdotal) FCI gains track closely with scores on weekly quizzes and Final Exams (which I usually use old AP exams for).
Discounting anecdotal evidence, as we should, we need careful studies of the relationship between FCI gains and long term performance in science and engineering before we treat FCI gains as the sacred symbols of successful physics teaching. But that, as I said in the beginning, is another topic.
Regards,
Jack



On Fri, 18 Aug 2006, John Clement wrote:

Unfortunately this anecdotal evidence always comes from people in the field
who "survived" conventional education. You are seeing people who by this
account are already engaging in hypothetical deductive reasoning and using
imagination in science. The spark may be there, but it can only enflame if
the mind is capable of reasoning. Remember that there is evidence now that
students in the UK are less capable of scientific reasoning than 30 years
ago. This is probably also true in the US.

I have already seen the results of courses which make science popular. In
my school IPC is popular and the teacher is beloved, but students come out
with statistically zero on the FCI or FMCE. At the school that my children
went to, they had a very popular physics course. My son learned essentially
zero, and I had to go back over it during the summer to bring him up to
speed. Popularity does not work when the cognitive side is not properly
attended to.

There is a large amount of evidence that learning requires that the students
be confronted with their misconceptions, and that produces confusion. The
confusion then produces negative feelings. If the students have been
accustomed to this, they will deal with it and then make progress. But the
current conventional methods of teaching are designed to make students
comfortable enough that the learning is quite low.

The real test, is not the number of students in the HS physics class, but
how many actually go on in science, and how many come out with higher
thinking skills, and more knowledge of physics concepts. The formal
operational thinkers will survive if they have initiative, and the rest will
fall by the wayside.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


I sya, "Nuts!"

There is plenty of evidence that it is a matter of the personality of the
teacher. Just for a non-physics starter, walk into a popular neighborhood
bar (or pub, if you're English; or Officer's Club, if you're in service)
and you'll find someone holding an audience spellbound with a description
of the grass growing, day-to-day, in his back yard.
I did my student teaching in the late '80's at a public high school
of about 1800. The head of the science department was a physics teacher,
and he'd made the course so popular that the school required 3 physics
teachers to handle the load, plus one or two additional to teach the
earth science course.
You have already met the enemy, and, truly, he is us, as is
probably evident from the postings on this net. I believe that the
missing art, for many, is the art of communicating at the emotional (as
opposed to intellectual) level, what it was that you found to be fun about
physics.
To avoid leaving you with a vague generality, let me pass on what
a young graduate student once told me about why she became an
archeologist: "When I was a little girl, I fell in love with the garbage
man who would drive by our house each day in a truck with a huge load of
what must have been all sorts of wonderful things."
If you can communicate with the students at the level of the
mystery of the garbage man then you will, I suspect attract the students
to your class. On the other hand, if you pontificate about the "fun of
physics" ... eat your heart out.
Regards,
Jack



_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


--
"Trust me. I have a lot of experience at this."
General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley