Re: [Phys-l] Lecture vs Advocacy

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Piaget and his collaborators studied a variety of ages.  The big idea is
that we do not incorporate received understanding, but rather we construct
it ourselves.  Piaget and Inhelder came up with a series of tests for the
"formal operational" level.  He said that this level was influenced by
cultural factors.  We now know that less than 30% of adults achieve this
level of thinking, and many remain at the "concrete operational" level as
measured by the Piagetian tasks.  These tasks are strong predictors of the
ability of students to understand physics.

The simple message idea simply doesn't work in practice.  You can tell
students, and demonstrate ideas to students persuasively, but they still
often do not believe what is presented.  One big problem is that they have
deeply imbedded conceptions that are at odds with the new information.
These conceptions simply do not change in the normal course of a lecture.
One important factor is bringing these ideas into conciousness.  Once in
short term memory they can be changed, but if never activated they are not.

It is a common assumption that logical arguments will convince people to
change their paradigms.  This simply does not happen.  I may happen for a
rare few, but most persist in thinking in the same old way.  This happens in
all physics courses, but it also happened historically.  The new ideas
generally are accepted by the young, and become standard when the older
people die or retire.

Essentially the methods that work put forth a coherent curriculum, and force
students to confront their current conceptions against the new information.
Generally this is done by Socratic dialog, but just viewing Socratic
discussion may also help.  The brain does not work in a simple fashion that
can be predicted by a simple behavioral model.  Most of the research so far
has been based on the ideas of Piaget & Vygotsky.  It has also been able to
improve student understanding, so the Piagetian model has some predictive
value.  Some techniques like the interactive lecture demo are based on some
simple psychological ideas.  When ideas are brought into short term memory
they are later stored back to long term memory.  During the brief time they
are in short term memory it is possible to modify them.  It is almost like
brain washing.

An essential idea from Piaget is that the student has to be hit by a
surprising result that creates cognitive dissonance and challenges them to
change their idea.  But this does not happen in the standard lecture where
the information "flows from the professor's notes to the student's notes
without going through either mind".  The interactive lecture, lab, tutorial
all force the student to consider the novel results, and provide the
necessary challenge to change concepts.

There is extensive literature on PER and science education on the web, and
also in The Physics Teacher, American Journal of Physics, and Journal of
Research in Science Teaching.  I would recommend looking at some of this.
There is also literature on why concepts transfer to other situations in
other journals.  Shayer & Adey have achieved far transfer using labs in
"Thinking Science".  Michelle Perry has shown that teaching specific
algorithms blocks transfer so telling students how to do specific problems
is not a good idea.  The simple communication model utterly fails to predict
these results.

The results of PER are not accepted by many because they have paradigms
which are resistant to accepting these ideas.  But like all scientific
revolutions acceptance comes slowly.  When it does come the previous
paradigm is so thoroughly rejected that people do not notice that they used
to hold it.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


> I, again, have no desire to belittle the necessity of clearly
> communicating the ideas of physics (be it in an exciting or dull way).
> Without that, all the excitement in the world is worth nothing.  All I
> mean to say is that if you really think something is neat and cool your
> students are more likely to adopt a similar viewpoint.  Further, if they
> are interested in and see the validity of, the topic at hand they are more
> likely to process the information centrally as opposed to peripherally
> (Elaboration Likelihood Model [of communication], Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).
>
> ELM states that in order for central processing to take place the
> processor must have the ability AND desire to do so.  You may perceive my
> desire for power points and such as a peripheral processing technique, not
> so...the power points are only pretty and fancy to people who don't use
> them.  To us it is the norm.  It would be like watching TV without a
> remote.  The remote isn't appreciated because it is expected, no special
> attention is given it, however its absence would be quickly noticed (and
> potentially distracting).
>
> The theory goes on to state that after considering the message through
> central processing, if the message is favorable, it is far more likely to
> become part of the processor's belief system and they are far less likely
> to be persuaded against that message.  You may say that physics is not
> about persuasion, it is about information, and quite so...but the physics
> that is counterintuitive can be hard to swallow and does require
> persuasion to a certain extent (for those less apt at physics).  For
> instance, I entered this discussion board with questions about light and
> time dilation...I did not believe it existed.  However my (somewhat
> limited) ability to and my desire to process the information centrally has
> persuaded me otherwise and I now accept it and am less likely to change my
> viewpoint than if I simply accepted that my professor said it was so and I
> respect him (peripheral processing).
>
> Also, to touch on the comment about Piaget and the learning of children.
> Do you mean to compare college student to preoperational children?  The
> gap in psychology and learning abilities/styles between the two is vast.
> I'm interested to see how you mean to relate them.
>
> This is an enjoyable discussion for me, thank you for continuing it.  I
> believe in my gut that what I said was correct and I am rather enjoying
> finding information to support it, but even more so enjoying watching you
> bat it back down and making me look for more.
>
> Cheers!
>
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