Re: [Phys-l] Physics First Revisited

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

At 21:56 -0600 2/5/09, Jack Uretsky wrote:

> 	Inspiration, however, is a tricky business.  It can, I believe, be
> done by lectures, and I have seen local examples where this seems to be
> the case.  Some frustrated teachers - and I think that some have
> complained in this forum - complain that they have tried drama, and it doesn't
> seem to help.  To them I respond, on the basis of my experiences acting
> and directing in community theatreover the past 33 years, that almost no
> actor can judge the quality of his/her own performance.  In short, if your
> lectures are not achieving the desired results, try them out on a talented
> drama coach, and thn follow instructions.
As we all know, or certainly should know, different students learn in 
different ways, and different teachers teach in different ways. 
Sometimes there is a disconnect between one teacher's teaching style 
and a student's learning style. If this happens, probably the best 
thing is to transfer the student to another class, if one is 
available. The disconnect is probably not bridgeable, and if the 
student remains with that teacher, the course will probably be a 
failure for both vis-a-vis each other. I don't know how often this 
happens, but surely it does happen. I have had personal experience 
with it, on both sides of the lectern.

There is a certain amount of theatre inherent in teaching. It is 
obligatory that the teacher get the students involved in the process, 
and some degree of theatricality is probably the best way to achieve 
that. But I question whether a student learns anything from the 
theatrical aspect of the teacher's actions, although I assume some 
may. However, too much theatre can have the opposite effect, of 
distracting the students from the point of the presentation and leave 
them happy from an enjoyable experience but no less ignorant than 
before.

I never had the pleasure of hearing Fermi lecture, but I'm told (by 
one of my dissertation advisors) that he was a mesmerizing speaker, 
with presentations so clear and logical and beautifully presented 
that the students simply forgot that they were supposed to take 
notes, thinking that this is all so clear they could never forget it, 
but then when the left class, they realized they had no recollection 
of what he said. It was that fact that led to his lecture notes being 
published, so that the students could figure out what went on in 
class. I have copies of those notes for nuclear physics and thermo, 
and they are just offset copies of his hand-written notes. Clearly 
the publishers (Benjamin) felt that they were good enough as is to 
enable someone to learn the subjects without recourse to attending 
his classes.

Very theatrical teachers can be wildly popular on campus, inducing 
students from all disciplines to attend these classes just for the 
theatrics, but I question whether much learning takes place in most 
of them.

As an aside, one of the things that has bothered me about most PER is 
an assumption made tacitly by many in that field that if we can just 
find the "magic bullet" all the students will learn everything the 
first time around and the world will be revolutionized. I 
overstating, of course, but I have heard similar sentiments expressed 
by several of the notables in the field, and others to whom I have 
mentioned my impression have agreed with me to some extent. I think 
this ignores the issue of teaching and learning styles, 
well-documented by the Myers-Briggs test analyses, and may be one of 
the reasons so many well-intentioned pedagogical schemes have not 
outlasted the lives of the principal promoters of them. There are 
certainly other reasons, among them the fact that almost all the new 
methods are highly labor-intensive, either demanding large amounts of 
pre-class preparation (I've heard more than one teacher, while 
touting their favorite PER pedagogy, say it helps to be a workaholic) 
or require a great deal of one-on-one or few-on-one contact between 
student(s) and teacher, thus either increasing the teacher workload 
greatly or requiring class sizes to be drastically reduced, one not 
very attractive to the teachers and the other not very attractive to 
the administrators.

I know that I didn't learn physics very well the first time around, 
or even the second. I am a proponent of a spiral approach, much has 
been advocated by many on this thread, because I found that it worked 
for me--in fact, I really didn't *understand* basic physics until I 
started teaching it. I know that a sample size of one doesn't give 
very reliable statistics, but the impression is strong with me, and 
almost everyone else I have discussed it with has agreed with me. 
Again, this isn't research, but I think it comes close to "expert 
opinion." I also have had students who, after passing out of Freshman 
physics because of 5s on the AP-C exams, decided to take physics 
again as college freshman, thinking that it would be a "furlough" 
course that they could get an easy A in to keep their GPA up, only to 
find that they were fighting to keep a C because they were relying on 
their prior knowledge, which was a) insufficient, and b) slipping 
away faster than they realized.

I used to be a physics first advocate, but I am no longer a strong 
proponent, although I know of places where it is successful and 
others where, for a variety of reasons, it has failed. What is more 
important, as John C. has been bringing us back to again and again, 
is teaching students how to think, right from the get-go. We cannot 
expect to shovel regurgitatable facts to them for eight years and 
then expect them to instantly transition to thinkers over the summer 
between eighth and nine grades. Learning to think has to start early, 
probably before formal schooling begins, but certainly by that time. 
We can't expect them to become advanced thinkers without first having 
learned how to be beginning and intermediate thinkers. That skill is 
probably more important than any other they will learn in elementary 
school, with the possible exception of reading (which must include 
comprehension, and not just saying the words).

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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