On Teaching Physics

Figuring out what works: Discipline-based education research

When it becomes difficult to make sense of a situation, we need to become researchers ó to combine observation and analysis to figure it out. When the subject is our students, we become physics education researchers. At the heart of physics education research is a shift in emphasis in physics instruction from What are we teaching and how can we deliver it? to What are the students learning and how do we make sense of what they do? In order to make this shift, we need to listen to the students and find ways to learn what they are thinking. Only then do we begin to make sense of how students learn physics in a way that helps us improve our courses meaningfully.
What is required goes well beyond how even good teachers interact with their students. We both have observed classes and seen frequent cases where an instructor listened, but failed to recognize the student's real difficulty. For example, in a junior level electronics class a student asked a question about a comparison of currents at two points on a single branch of a relatively complicated circuit. Like many physics instructors, the professor in this class was a concerned and dedicated teacher. He listened carefully to the student and recognized that the student was confused. But instead of asking questions to determine why the student was confused, he proceeded to give a detailed description of how the entire complicated circuit worked. However, since the current was necessarily the same throughout the branch of the circuit, it was likely that the student's difficulty was a deep one  not addressed in the instructor's response ó that the current was "used up" en route. The student politely nodded (no better off than before) and the teacher moved on.

For the full article, go to: http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/qm/qmcourse/NewModel/research/whatwork/index.htm

Why Study History?

Good excerpt from Peter N. Stearns:
People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past. Given all the demands that press in from living in the present and anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the desirable and available branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American educational programs do—on a good bit of history? And why urge many students to study even more history than they are required to?
Any subject of study needs justification: its advocates must explain why it is worth attention. Most widely accepted subjects—and history is certainly one of them—attract some people who simply like the information and modes of thought involved. But audiences less spontaneously drawn to the subject and more doubtful about why to bother need to know what the purpose is.
Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of history can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.
In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds its place in current education is because earlier leaders believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up with the theory of evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent. Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline.
History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.

More on Reading Levels

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress released in 2003, 36 percent of fourth graders and 25 percent of eighth graders read below the basic level. The lack of basic education often leads to high school dropouts and illiteracy evident in the adult population in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Education, about 14 percent or 32 million adults in the U.S. have low literacy skills. Levels of proficiency in reading needs to be addressed in elementary school to prevent problems in later life
In some writing systems of non-English languages, pictographs are used to represent meanings of sounds, while the English alphabet represents sounds. To read English well and have strong communication skills, students must learn the sounds of English letters and understand how they work together. When phonics is introduced as a way to teach English, language learners can learn correct pronunciation and grammar to avoid flaws that will result in poor communication.