Below is the "Disequilibration, followed by Constructivism" assignment in Physics 2091H. Please submit your work to me by uploading your file (named something like "assignment-1-chrissmith") in PDF, RTF, Text, or OpenDocument format as an attachment to the appropriate myLearningSystem "electronic drop-box" before the due date and also bring a paper copy to class.
Two meetings before the Finale Submission, you will turn in an Initial Submission which will be redistributed along with an editing form to one of your classmates. After you have completed the Peer Editing of your classmate's assignment, the peer editing will be turned in the meeting before the Final Submission is due. The Final Submission, possibly incorporating any improvements suggested by the peer editing, will be turned in on the Final Submission due date.
Please put your name, section and word count on the front top right corner of your Final Submission. There is no need to include a seperate cover page. Do not include earlier drafts or editing reports with your final submission. At most, a single double sided piece of paper should be sufficient. If multiple pages are required, use a stapler for your hard copy submission - there is one outside the physics office beside the photocopier as well as one on the physics assignment drop box.
A penalty of 100% of the grade for the "Peer Editing" of your classmate's work will be applied to a late Initial Submission. A penalty of 200% of the grade for the "Peer Editing" of your classmate's work will be applied to a late "Peer Editing" submission. A penalty of 20% per day of the total will be applied to a late Final Submission.
I look forward to receiving your work.
Below, I am sending you some correspondence Dr. John Earnshaw had with Professor Deborah Berrill about the pedagogy used in our PIPS activities, and about some of the background philosophy that its creators employed. At the university level, these ideas are very new; at the elementary level, constructivism has been talked about for several years. (I'm not so sure if disequilibrating is included.) You will recall my saying at the outset of our course that I hoped you would see "how we learn science effectively" in this course as well as "what".
In this assignment, you are to read the material below, and then write a 300 to 400 word report (only the first 450 words will be graded) on your understanding of what it says, on its relationship to our course, and on whether you think it might be relevant in your future elementary classroom setting.
The grading for this assignment will be based on:
The correspondence between Dr. Earnshaw and Prof. Berrill is as follows:
Dear Professor Berrill:
There is a raging debate going on this week in a Physics Education Research (PER) chat group about physics labs, ranging from "completely useless" to "most powerful learning technique". It was prompted by a guest editorial in the American Journal of Physics. The two paragraphs below capture most clearly the pedagogy that PIPS uses in teaching physical science concepts; I see it and use it more clearly every day. Every PIPS concept is introduced using the philosophy that a student's best way to learn is to have her/him predict in writing something incorrectly, then to prove to herself/himself using discussion and hands-on exploration that there is a shortcoming in the prediction, and then to update that error by some activity and discussion. The buzz words are that "effective learning requires disequilibration, followed by constructivism". PIPS has chosen themes from physical science where common sense and/or limited knowledge do not normally lead to correct predictions. The paragraphs below were created by someone who was denied tenure in some large physics department in the USA because he dared to challenge the old way of "lecture teaching". He said:
"The best way to create new memories is to fail to accomplish a plan that you personally created. The failure makes it highly unusual, and so worthwhile creating or modifying memories, and since it is in a context in which you thought you knew what was going to happen, based on existing knowledge, the new memory is necessarily linked to the old ones. The resulting memory structure is much richer, is linked to a wider variety of situations, and so is more likely to be recalled in new, unfamiliar situations. On the other hand, this is not likely to happen if failure is a persistent state. One role of the teacher is to ensure that sufficient resources exist to insure that does not happen."
"To be effective, the lab must first allow time for student generation of strategies as well as intermediate checkpoints for reflection on what has happened, which of the initial ideas worked and which didn't, and how the strategy should be modified. In other words, you create a written, dynamic memory of how you thought in addition to what you thought about, and you create it, as ever, by seeing how it has failed."
In conclusion, I think that "the old way" of lecturing has found a replacement. I am moved by the little poem someone contributed:
"Tell me, and I may forget;
Show me, and I may remember;
Involve me, and I'll know."
Regards, John Earnshaw
Professor Berrill replied:
John:
This is really neat stuff! The "disequilibration followed by constructivism" is terrific! BUT, from my point, it's also not quite complete, depending on what is assumed in the disequilibration and in the construction.
Disequilibration: Before one can be set 'off kilter' as it were, one [the student] needs first to articulate what their perception / understanding already is. If this is not done at the individual level, then I don't think students attend well enough to the disequilibration. So, from my point, that individual articulation is a crucial first step. I think this happens in the PIPS materials -- but it may be embedded and not obvious.
Construction: Folks who are new to constructivism tend to feel that students can just construct a logical response and that is fine. Of course, that approach is very flawed and no where is it more obvious than in the physical sciences where things like atomic structure would not be a 'logical' construction based only on the daily lived experience of most people. So, from my point, constructivism also necessitates good mentoring, with the mentor giving space for the apprentice to construct their own understandings but with intervention (of a disequilibrating nature) when the construction has logic that is not appropriate for the case in mind.
There is some really interesting research going on vis a vis neural connections and learning, with recent brain work enabling a very different kind of research to be conducted. It's still in its infancy, but many folks are talking about brain-based learning, alluding specifically to making stronger neural connections; building 'safe' classrooms where folks can make mistakes and learn, with the 'safety' aspect now being linked to enhancement of synapse connections and 'fear / anxiety' being linked to chemical inhibitors being released..........
Deborah