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Re: [Phys-l] Inquiry



In a message dated 2/25/2009 9:59:54 AM Eastern Standard Time,
jbellina@saintmarys.edu writes:

I'm not sure what you mean here.

I think part of the vision of guided inquiry is that students learn
in ways that are similar to how scientists learn new things...but
doing, discussing, being wrong often, writing, reading, etc. The
adult scientists are guided by the discourse in their community. The
student scientists are guided by the teacher and the instructional
materials.

In the adult community, there is a common language, and a common
conceptual framework or a few competing frameworks. In the student
community there is the common language developed as they experiment
and work to develop understanding, and the frameworks supported by
the teacher and the instructional materials.

So in what ways are the students not learning like adult scientists?

It seems to me that when we learn science as scientists, we are
working inductively to find patterns and then deductively from those
patterns to see if they predict well enough. In so doing we
formulate ideas about the patterns and how to express them. The
problem with so much of school science is that it focuses on the
deductive piece, but provides little basis for the conceptual
understanding that comes from trying to make sense of the inductive
results. So the students learn a limited set of way of applying the
physics "rules" but have little understanding of the meaning and
content of the "rules."

joe
)))))))))))))))))


Joe what you write is interesting. Richard Feynman who spent some time
lecturing at Universities in South America made observations about the students
in these Universities which seem to relate to the points you make. Of course
these days we are getting quite a few first rate Physicists from Latin
America so we might reasonably assume the situation there has improved now.

Bob Zannelli

)))))))))))))))))))))0


Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. Ph.D.
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556

On Feb 24, 2009, at 9:07 PM, David Craig wrote:

I don't mean to be cheeky. I DO generally support a lot of what PER
is trying to accomplish, and use many PER methods in my own courses,
to the extent that time and resources permit.

That said, I often find myself with this question: when are students
supposed to learn how to learn like adults? (Like adults must, that
is.)

[Like throwing gasoline on the fire, I know....]

David Craig


<http://web.lemoyne.edu/~craigda/>





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