Less Talk, More Action: Improving Science Learning

[groovedaddy]

Over the past few years, scientists have been working to transform education from the inside out, by applying findings from learning and memory research where they could do the most good, in the classroom. A study published in the journal Science on Thursday illustrates how promising this work can be — and how treacherous.

The research comes from a closely watched group led by Carl Wieman, a Nobel laureate in physics at the University of British Columbia who leads a $12 million initiative to improve science instruction using research-backed methods for both testing students’ understanding and improving how science is taught.

In one of the initiative’s most visible studies, Dr. Wieman’s team reports that students in an introductory college physics course did especially well on an exam after attending experimental, collaborative classes during the 12th week of the course. By contrast, students taking the same course from another instructor — who did not use the experimental approach and continued with lectures as usual — scored much lower on the same exam.

In teleconference last week, Dr. Wieman and his co-authors said that some instructors at the university were already eager to adopt the new approach and that it should improve classroom learning broadly, in other sciences and at many levels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/science/13teach.html?ref=science

[struggle4progress]

1. Dogmatic methods can't teach experimentalism or critical thinking

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Extra instructors spend more time with the students --> better test scores? Who knew?

That's the single biggest problem with all these "new" approaches to teaching -- basically, the secret ingredient is MORE MAN-HOURS OF WORK per student, meaning that you need to hire more instructors to teach the same number of students, meaning that you need MORE MONEY. It doesn't matter what you call it -- and there are several "new practices" floating around out there, all with high-sounding but ultimately meaningless names, that result in students getting more attention from instructors, usually by adding more teaching assistants or student volunteers, i.e. MORE LABOR -- someone, somewhere, has to pay for all the additional labor of that "new" method. Ultimately, the only really new feature of these methods reduces to MORE LABOR. More labor means more learning. Not new.

But ... then there's the point of diminishing returns. Just how much individual attention do students need? How much can be justified? At some point, you have to expect students to mature enough that they can participate in their own education, rather than expecting every single detail to be stage-managed for them. Sure, you could hire extra people to help students check the spelling and punctuation of every sentence they write, but they should be able to do that for themselves, so it's not justifiable. With each passing year, students are expected to take on more and more responsibility for the elementary aspects of their own education, and those aspects become less and less elementary. If that's not true, it can't be said that "education" is accomplishing much.

Perhaps the one point which might be safely taken from this study is this: lecturing to 260 people at a time is not the best way to teach, at least not for some people, and some subjects. This does not mean it's all bad. At least based on this brief description, the study doesn't strike me as one that can support a much stronger conclusion than that. Again, this is not news. Most schools already know this, and deal with it by having large lecture sections accompanied by smaller "recitation" or "conference" sections with a much lower student-faculty (actually, usually a TA) ratio and an emphasis on homework problems and quizzes. HOMEWORK (gasp!!)?? Oh yeah, open any standard textbook in one of those 260-student lecture courses and you'll typically find a whole bunch of homework problems at the end of each chapter (or section) and instructors usually assign some of those problems for students to do -- so that they can get practice SOLVING PROBLEMS. Most textbooks now include a number of worked examples in the body of the text which spell out *how* to solve at least one problem of each important type. None of which helps, of course, if the students don't actually read the material and work through the examples (i.e. writing the work out -- it does little good otherwise). So if you get someone to stand over each student's shoulder and watch while they try to work the problems, yeah, I suspect you will see somewhat better results. At least you'll see the students making more effort. But when will such students grow up? If they can't be educated without being "nannied" through every step of the process, what are the chances that they'll ever put that education to any good use based on their own motivation?

Some of these students aren't going to make much of themselves. That's sad, but educators shouldn't feel responsible for that. Their job is to educate those who are inclined to be educated, and are willing to work for it. Those who don't match either description may very well find success in some other arena of life, but scholastic life is not for them, and they shouldn't be cajoled into believing otherwise.


(As to the study cited in the OP, it is hard to believe that a "study" with so many flaws is being discussed seriously. The criticism cited makes it read like less of a study than a single extended antidote. Students were taught according to a novel method which introduced certain differences the authors deemed important, in addition to lots of other differences which they decided not to consider. At the very least, the fact that students were *aware* that they were being singled out for special treatment raises the spectre of the Westinghouse Effect -- the phenomenon of people responding favorably to novelty, even when the novelty is of no benefit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer's_paradox#Hawthorne_effect This is why any claims that students learn more when taught bilingually, or using base five arithmetic or simplified grammar or new alphabets or storytelling circles or interpretive dance must be taken with a large grain of salt.)

[caraher]

3. It's long been known that lecturing is ineffective in physics

The single most robust result in physics education research, known for a very long time, is that in introductory physics lectures are singularly ineffective at imparting basic conceptual understanding. There are myriad alternatives developed over the last few decades that focus on some form of active learning; this may be just one more to add to the list.

Some are more labor-intensive and some are not. This kind of research is not a jobs program for physics teachers; it's part of a longstanding effort to improve effectiveness.