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Re: [Phys-L] abstractions



All of which suggest the need for more time and/or a much reduced curriculum. Maybe a 'well designed' spiral physical science program spanning 3rd or 4th grade right through high-school?

rwt

On 2/10/2014 1:07 AM, John Clement wrote:
This on the face of it sounds like a good argument, but there is a problem
with it. Just providing counter examples and conceptual arguments do not
work by themselves. They don't work in politics, religion, or even
anti-smoking campaigns when presented in a straight forward fashion. But
they do work if they are structured properly. It is now well known
psychology that when a paradigm is challenged people make up arguments to
defend it, and work to maintain it. Directly attacking it usually
strengthens it rather than diminishing it. Knowing this, I am not under any
illusion that what I say will change already made up minds on this list or
other places.

The ILDs get around this by bringing up the original paradigm, and while it
is in short term memory, it is refuted. Then when it is reconsolidated or
stored back, it is changed. It is actually a kindly form of brain washing.
However, it certainly needs reinforcement. Other method uses anchor and
bridging analogies to bridge between correct conceptions to the target
conception. There are many things that can be changed, and should be made
more consistent. Consistent notation can have some benefit. Providing
mental models are also beneficial. Making students grapple with changing
representations is extremely beneficial rather than the old fashioned method
of just providing them with handy-dandy equations and getting them to use
them. Using real problems rather than the usual back of the chapter
problems are also beneficial. Making them compare things, figure out when
things are wrong, and confronting them with fewer, but novel problems rather
than the same-oh-same oh repetitive ones is also beneficial.

You have to make them grapple with the inconsistencies and always ask
questions like "how do you know that", and not accept incomplete chains of
logic. They have been so conditioned to regurigi-problems that they put
thinking away in class. The big difficulty with misconceptions is that
explaining a correct conception is added to the brain, and the misconception
is still in long term storage. So you either have to try to modify it by
reconsolidation, or promote adding connections to the new conception so it
is strong enough to overcome the existing conception. The spiral approach
certainly does the latter, but it requires several years. Using the ILDs or
Mazur's similar method of mounting demos works more quickly. There are
other methods that also work more quickly such as tutorials, Modeling...

There is also the problem that it takes time to form new neurons and grow
new connections. The appropriate time seems to be about 2 weeks because
Laws has found that scores on conceptual tests continue to rise for 2 weeks
after good research based activities. In conventional teaching 2 weeks is
time in which a concept decays to almost zero. Mazur found this with
respect to conventional demos, but by making demos similar to the ILDs he
was able to improve the results a lot.

Finally there is no substitute for having students thinking at a higher
level. It is possible to improve thinking in a research based physics
class. When this happens the correlation is stronger between FMCE gain and
a thinking skill post test than with a thinking skill pretest. So raising
the overall thinking skills does help slightly in your class. Shayer & Adey
found that it helps much more in subsequent classes. This means that summer
school classes are under a huge handicap because there is not enough time
for much neuron growth.



--
Richard Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College

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www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
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