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Re: [Phys-l] corrupting the youth



Fantastic, someone who has actually read some of the literature. Yes, the
comment about lecture-first for a small fraction of students is true, but as
I recall they also had exploration. The 3 components needed to be there,
but the order could be changed for some students. I do not have the figures
for how much better this group was, so it may not have been a huge effect.
One of the primary reasons for using the learning cycle was because it
increased student thinking ability, and if they are already high formal,
this may not be as necessary.

And yes there are a few teachers who use what I would term "free play
discovery", but this is a minority. But some cognitive scientists have the
bee in their bonnet that free play discovery is used all over the place, and
they go out of their way to set it up as a straw dummy. They ignore the
research into guided inquiry. "Nobody" would apply strongly to HS. In the
elementary and MS all kinds of strange things go on. And now in elementary
science has been almost removed from the curriculum in favor of reading &
math noodling.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


A minor footnote. Renner et. al. found that high-formal students
actually did better with lecture-first than with guided inquiry. This
was one of many studies in which they used various permutations of the
Learning Cycle in teaching chemistry concepts. Of course, such
students are a small minority of the population. Also, it is
unfortunate but true that a certain small percentage of elementary and
middle school teachers attempt pure discovery because they
misunderstand guided inquiry. They drop it quickly, though, because
the students don't learn anything. No actual figures on this, but
plenty of anecdotal evidence from talking to teachers.

Bill




On Dec 15, 2010, at 9:44 AM, John Clement wrote:

Oh come on, the word "discovery" is a red herring. NOBODY uses pure
discovery methods because that is equated with free play. PER does
use
inquiry methods, but the students have concrete preparation before
they
figure out a system. The systems are set up carefully so the
students can
analyze them. So if you will we use "guided discovery".

So certainly contrasting free play discovery with didactic teaching
favors
lecture. But when you contrast inquiry results with standard didactic
methods inquiry wins hands down. Please read The Physics Teacher
article on
a pair of identical twins educated by conventional vs PER methods.
And then
of course there are many other comparison articles which show that
inquiry
wins. I have not seen any where standard didactic methods win.
Anyone is
free to find them and point them out. If I can, I will read them.
By can,
I mean have access to the article.

Modeling uses guided inquiry and does not give the student already
cooked
equations. It achieves high gain, and I have some evidence that it
also
improves student thinking ability. Actually it achieves near
transfer, and
I contend there is some far transfer.

Professional physicists use inquiry. But many of the greatest ideas
were
actually discovered by accident. Indeed most revolutionary ideas are
discovered by accident. Radiation is one of the these ideas. But
unlike
the average student physicists understand that when one comes across
something that is surprising, it has to either be fitted into their
current
paradigm, or that paradigm might have to change. Actually that is
what
babies do. But students have been trained to accept authority
blindly and
have unlearned this idea in the context of education. To learn more
about
this read some of Piaget's works.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX
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