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Just this last week I was discussing with a group of teachers the fact
that scientists consider all changes in velocity as accelerations, and
that using deceleration might be lay talk, but not scientifically
appropriate.
One teacher said that she accepted that, but that all
reductions in speed were to be considered negative accelerations and
all increases positive accelerations.
In the short time we had, I
tried to help her understand that the world does not come with pluses
and minuses attached. She was the victim of previous educators who
deemed it "simpler" to assign increases in speed as positive and
decreases in speed as negative.
It might have suited the purposes of
those educators at the time, but it blocked this teacher from seeing a
bigger picture of how scientists analyze the physical world. That's a
case where educators used a technique that actually constrained this
teacher's understanding.