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At the recent AAPT meeting I heard it mentioned that both doing samplethis
problems on the board and showing derivations in a similar manner have a
minimal impact on student learning. This happens to fit with my
preconceptions about teaching, so of course I am not here to challenge
idea. ;-)
So far so good!
Mostly I am hoping to find evidence for this in a PER article somewhere.If
anyone on here knows of such a publication I would be grateful for a
citation.
I'd say quit while you're ahead. The problem is that you can find
evidence for almost anything in the literature.
OK, put up. Name a specific article and which things can not be true! I
I'm not saying the PER literature is particularly worse relative to
the literature in other fields I can think of, but in absolute terms
it's bad. I'm going to pick on it today because it is relevant to
the question that was asked, and to the topic of this list.
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I worked in the "neural
networks" field at a time when 90% of the published papers in the
field were nonsense. People sneered at me for being part of that
community. But I didn't take it personally. I was new to the field,
but I was able to figure out which 10% of the literature was worth
paying attention to. The rest was a big waste of trees, but it
didn't interfere with my work.
So, if you work in the PER field, please don't be too insulted by
what I am saying here.
This is not an isolated incident. Every so often I go read the PER
literature, and what I find -- almost always -- is page after page of
stuff that cannot possibly be true. If the PER literature told me
that the sun rises in the east, I wouldn't necessarily believe it,
especially if I had any first-hand reason to doubt it (which in fact
I do ... and there's a funny story about that, but it can wait for
another day).
The field is supposed to be about physics, pedagogy, and criticalOK where is there bad physics in an article. Perhaps the questions in the
thinking ... but what I see in the literature is mostly wrong physics,
bad pedagogy, and an astounding lack of critical thinking.
I would trust the intuition of one actual classroom teacher over anyBut the average physics classroom teacher achieves FCI or FMCE gain in the
ten PER articles.
I know there are some good people on this list who publish in theAhhh, but the darkness resists it. Remember that it took a new generation
PER literature, and I would encourage you to continue. As the saying
goes: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot
overcome it.