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Re: [Phys-l] Independent Variables + syllabii



Sounds like the French ed. system, or so my mother said it was in the 30's. She said all the students in a class thru out France would be reading the same page at the same time. I suspect not true now.

bc, whose mother's stories were usually true.

p.s. At least it appears the bureaucrats' hearts are in the right place.

thecraftyphantom@australia.edu wrote:

John, your comments and questions brought a rye smile to my face. I shall
try and give some more context to my situation.

You replied:

On 10/30/2006 11:00 PM, thecraftyphantom@australia.edu wrote:
The syllabus that I teach states,

"A student: justifies the appropriateness of a particular investigation
plan:
11.2 plan first-hand investigations to:
a) demonstrate the use of the terms 'dependent' and 'independent' to
describe variables involved in the investigation
b) identify variables that needed to be kept constant, develop >>

strategies to ensure that these variables are kept constant,

and demonstrate the use of a control"

I have no clear idea what that means. Are the independent >>variables
supposed to be kept constant? Are the dependent variables >>supposed to

be kept constant?

Does the rest of the syllabus look like the passage quoted above?


I agree with you, on the face of it the language is undecipherable. However, in my part of the world we have a highly integrated "public
school" system where each school is truly part of the "system" All public
schools teaching physics use this syllabus. When the syllabus was produced
uniform workshops and conferences were set up (and are still put on) by the
Dept Ed to help us uniformly interpret and understand the syllabus and its
intent. In addition, system wide support material is provided. All the
students in the state sit a common exam at the end of the course and
detailed and exhaustive feedback is provided to each school about the
questions asked, the student responses and teaching issues that arise. There is a long tradition in the testing regime that helps interpret the
syllabus. So the syllabus is not an isolated document but exists in a rich
culture and context. That said, it is put together by non-scientists and
bureaucrats and so has difficulties. I appreciate your comments!

As a note, some of the syllabus is good such as

�� define weight as the force on an object due to a
gravitational field

and

�� define gravitational potential energy as the work done to
move an object from a very large distance away to a
point in a gravitational field Ep = − Gm1m2/r

In fact, John, my students found your discussion on weight most useful when
we investigated the concept this morning.

Likewise, some of the syllabus is appalling. You also wrote


If so, you should gather the villagers, get some torches and
pitchforks,
and march on the state offices.


Even though there are many hundreds of public schools and hence science
teachers, our political clout is small. Pur professional associations have
achieved some changes but not many.

BTW I am sorry for the slow response time, I have been involved in a
science teachers workshop over the last day or so, put on by our education
system. It was about analysing and interpreting student responses to
tests.

regards
Peter Craft
Corowa High School








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