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Well, chemists love sig figs and dot diagrams...
You write:
There are lots of teachers who have been trained to say "There
is no such thing as a dumb question" but that is so obviously
false that it's embarrassing to even mention it.
I'm curious -- what's a "dumb qustion" a student could ask
in a physics class?
Phys-L@Phys-L.org writes:
Back on 02/09/2014 07:21 PM, Anthony Lapinski wrote:
Interesting. This has been my experience at four schools I've taught
at. Kids are curious in middle school, but that all changes in high
school. Part of it is peer pressure. Kids don't ask questions for
fear they will appear "dumb" in front of their classmates. Such a
shame.
Yes, indeed that's part of it ... an important part.
Meanwhile, there are other parts to the story which are
also important, and perhaps even more interesting, because
they are more directly under our control.
On page 245 of Sal Khan's book it says
«Whether or not creativity, still less genius,
can be taught, it can certainly be squelched.»
I agree. There are a thousand ways in which creativity and
curiosity can be squelched by teachers, and by the educational
system as a whole. For example:
*) If the teacher does not enjoy fielding questions, there
are plenty of ways of discouraging students from asking
questions.
*) Then there is the time-dishonored yet widespread practice
of requiring students to learn stuff that cannot possibly
be true, e.g. the "sig figs" rules, the five-step acyclic
"poster" version of "the scientific method", Lewis dot
diagrams of the O2 molecule, and so on. This is the opposite
and the enemy of critical thinking.
*) If a question has more than one right answer, and the
student comes up with a "creative" answer, i.e. a correct
but unconventional answer, the teacher can mark it wrong.
*) et cetera.
ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE ... There are a thousand things a
teacher can do to make things better. This starts with the
oft-overlooked double-negative strategy of scrupulously not
doing the things that squelch creativity and curiosity, such
as those itemized above.
Furthermore, there are concrete steps a teacher can take to
encourage students to ask questions, even if this requires
overcoming a certain amount of peer pressure.
The most obvious thing is, just ask!
-- At the beginning of each class: "Does anybody have any
questions? Any questions about what we did last time? Any
questions about the reading?"
Going another step down that road: Teach 'em how to formulate
a good question. Give them /examples/ of good questions and
bad questions.
There are lots of teachers who have been trained to say "There
is no such thing as a dumb question" but that is so obviously
false that it's embarrassing to even mention it.
Being allowed to ask questions is a privilege, and those who
abuse it will lose it. The devil is in the details. For
example: Some computer questions should be directed to the
low-level tech support guy, some to the mid-level engineer,
and some to the Internet Architecture Board.
The point is, the appropriateness of the question depends partly
on the question, partly on who is being asked, partly on waiting
for a good opportunity, and partly on other details.
Similarly, in a classroom situation, some questions are much
more appropriate than others. If somebody is stuck because
they couldn't be bothered to do the reading, that's not a
good question. OTOH if somebody really did try, and got as
far as they possibly could, but got hung up because the text
is self-contradictory, that's something else entirely.
There are a lot of moving parts here. It's not just peer pressure.
Deciding what is an appropriate question and what's not is rather
a subtle question, and students were not born knowing how to do it.
Among other things, there is an element of good honest modesty:
Bubba should not assume that his question is so important that
he gets to take class time away from everybody else. IMHO it is
rational for students to err on the side of caution.
So the punch line is, you should /teach/ students how to frame
questions in a good way. Make this an explicit part of the
curriculum. Train them to wait for a good opportunity. Students
in the introductory course were not born knowing how to do this.
Forsooth, in my experience, newly-hired PhDs need to be trained
how to do this.
Here's one way to proceed, which is reasonable as a long-term policy
and especially good as a way to get started: Solicit questions
in writing. Then sort through the questions, and answer only
the best ones.
-- In this way, students gradually get a picture of what you
consider a good question.
-- The issue of peer pressure does not arise.
-- Questions that could easily have been answered by googling
are silently discarded.
-- Questions that are wildly outside the scope of the course
are silently discarded.
-- Questions that are tangential can be answered in private,
without distracting the rest of the class.
-- There is no penalty for asking a dumb question, except
insofar as it represents a lost opportunity to ask a better
question.
-- You can make the larger point that this procedure is very
common in the real world. Example: City Council meetings.
The larger the audience, the more necessary it is. (By way
of contrast, when addressing a small group of highly
professional colleagues, it is not necessary.)
-- You can directly address the higher-level issue of what
makes the good questions especially good.
-- You can answer the questions directly in Q&A format, or
indirectly by weaving the answer into the next lesson.
-- You get to keep the questions. The next time you give the
course, you should weave most of the answers into the lessons,
so that the question does not arise. Think of the course as
a "living document" subject to perpetual improvement.
Obviously this is related to flipping the classroom. related in
complicated ways.
This does not preclude other question-formats, such as extemporaneous
raise-your-hand type questions. In particular, as the year goes on,
students get a better idea of what counts as a good question, and
can better judge when it is appropriate to interrupt and when not.
Collecting questions in advance is not meant to solve all the
world's problems. From the student's point of view, it would
be better to have the option of blurting out any old question
and getting an immediate answer. In a tutoring situation, that
would be possible, but alas we cannot afford to provide every
student with optimal tutoring.
For example: Philip II of Macedon had enormous resources.
After shopping around a little bit, he hired the smartest
guy in the world -- some guy named Aristotle -- to tutor
his kid Alex for a couple of years.
There's a lot more that could be said about this, but I'll stop
here.
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Forum for Physics Educators
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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@phys-l.org
http://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l