🚀 go-pugleaf

> We dispense information without giving students the tools
>to evaluate and use information (math, critical thinking, skepticism). We
>confuse training with education. Students emerge with huge gaps in their
>understanding, and huge amounts of misinformation. Worse, they are totally
>unaware of the deficiencies in their achievements. They have the
>*illusion* of understanding. The whole enterprise is a smoke and mirrors
>operation to make everyone involved look good and feel good.
>
>        -- Donald

True.  But there is hope.The modeling method corrects many weaknesses of
the traditional lecture - demonstration method, including the fragmentation
of knowledge, student passivity, and the persistence of naive beliefs about
the physical world.  It presents physics as a unified set of a small number
of models.  It starts by asking a question of nature, and gives students
the opportunity to answer that question by experimentation and
model-building.
        Modeling Instruction has become quite popular in the Phoenix area,
where it was developed over the last 10 years.  And, since it was developed
as part of the doctoral research of a high school teacher, its success has
been documented extensively.  (For example, see the article "Force Concept
Inventory" by "David Hestenes, Malcolm Wells, and Gregg Swackhamer, in THE
PHYSICS TEACHER, March 1992.)
        Send an email to me if you'd like a copy of that article.

Jane Jackson (Professor of Physics, Scottsdale Community College--on leave)
Dept. of Physics, Box 871504, Arizona State University, Tempe AZ 85287-1504.
E-mail: jane.jackson@asu.edu  (My alias is jacksonj, if you're on BITNET.)
PHONE: (602)965-8438.  FAX: (602)965-7331.