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The Modeling Approach to Teaching Physics Presentation to School Board (or group of administrators) Your name Your high school address Why a different approach to physics instruction?
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The Modeling Approach to Teaching Physics Presentation to School Board (or group of administrators) Your name Your high school address
Why a different approach to physics instruction? • Research shows that after conventional instruction, students could not fully explain even the simplest of concepts. • Worse yet, conscientious conventional instruction delivered by talented (and even award-winning teachers) did not remedy the situation significantly.
What has NOT made a difference in student understanding? • lucid, enthusiastic explanations and examples • dramatic demonstrations • textbooks • lots of problem solving and worksheets
Any theory of instruction must answer two questions. • What should students learn? • How should students learn? Conventional instruction’s answer: • Tell the student as much as you can. • Show the students as much as you can.
Basic Assumptions of Conventional Instruction • Students have the same mental models as the instructor • Students understand what they hear and see. • These are NOT warranted by assessment results or interviews with students.
Why does conventional instruction fail? • It is founded on folklore, heresay, and casual observation. • Its principles of teaching are fragmented and compartmentalized. • It has been uncritically accepted.
An alternative, the modeling approach, has had significant success in promoting understanding. Why? • It is grounded in systematic, empirical investigation. • It is student centered. • It can be critically evaluated (FCI).
Models capture the similarities that scientists perceive. • Science is the search for reproducible patterns in Nature. • We grasp and hold these patterns as concepts by constructing models. • Models are representations of structure in physical systems.
The Modeling Method seeks to foster: • the view that science is coherent (as opposed to the view that science consists of a set of loosely related concepts and problems. • the view that learning occurs through actively seeking understanding (as opposed to the view that learning consists of taking notes, listening to the teacher, memorizing facts/formulas, etc.
Traditional physics instruction: • Problems and their answers are seen to be the basic units of knowledge. • Everyone knows the answer comes from equations - why draw diagrams? • Promotes “plug and chug” mentality. • Familiar student protest is “But we never did a problem like this before!”
Modeling Method approach to learning physics: • A few basic models form the content core of physics. • Novel problems do not require the use of novel models. • The process is most important, not just the bottom line final answer.
How does the Modeling Method foster student understanding? • Students design their own experimental procedures. • Students must justify their interpretations of data in Socratically guided dialogs. • Models created from experimental interpretations must be deployed in carefully selected problems in order to “cut the contextual strings”.
Solutions are presented by students to the entire class on whiteboards. • Computer technology is used as another tool of learning. Acceptable solutions • reveal how a model (or models) accounts for the behavior of some physical system. • are fully explicated using multiple representations.
Justification of the model • Explicit appeal to an interpretation of an experimental result. Common questions: • “Why did you do that?” • “Where did that come from?” • “How did you know to do that?” Unless students can explain something fully, they do not understand it!
How is the modeling classroom different? • It is student centered vs teacher centered. • Students are active vs passive. • Emphasis is on cognitive skill development vs knowledge transfer. • Students construct and evaluate arguments vs finding the right answer. • Teacher is Socratic guide vs the main authority. • Extensive use of computers for data acquisition and analysis.
What is the role of the instructor in a Modeling classroom? • Designer of experimental environments. • Designer of problems and activities. • Critical listener to student presentations, focusing on what makes good arguments in science. • Must establish a trusting, open, “OK to make a mistake” classroom atmosphere. • No longer the central character.
Implementation Results • Modeling Methodology in use in over 300 classrooms. • Improved student performance: • FCI gains much higher than in traditional classrooms • Long-term retention of basic physics principles • Improved problem-solving (MBT)
