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> These classes are for teaching the bare basic of bio, chem, and physics to see if the kids enjoy them. As it stands they can barely do this. Has anyone heard
by mncharity 6y ago
> These classes are for teaching the bare basic of bio, chem, and physics to see if the kids enjoy them. As it stands they can barely do this.
Has anyone heard of a setting for discussing doing transformatively better than this?
Not in PER sense of "if only we could teach intro physics classes successfully", or bio's "if only undergraduates had a firmer grasp of central dogma", but more like Larimore's[1] suggestion, in the context of preK science education, that students have a human right to make sense of their world, now. Big hairy audacious goal. And the heavy lifting for it, would have to come from the science community.
As in, kindergarten students have a right to be told the Sun isn't yellow, to not be given popular intro astronomy college textbooks which have that wrong, and to not grow up to be first-tier astronomy and physical sciences graduate students who are still confused about that, and about color in general. Students have a right to chemistry education content which chemistry education research doesn't describe using adjectives like incoherent. A right to content which reflects current insight and understanding of the physical world, not "it's traditional to teach it this way" wretchedness.
Consider a dedicated professional teacher, in a hypothetical country, whose education system is focused on call-and-response rote memorize-and-regurgitate, who argues the implausibility of teaching US-style intro-physics problem solving. That can be both individually correct, and still reflect a profound collective failure of their community and society. Now consider a system focused on plug-and-chug toy problem solving, with no feel for reasonable values, narrow scopes, and topical descriptions divorced from current understanding. That can be both a professionally-pursued local maxima, and still reflect a profound collective failure. Including a failure to explore how to do transformatively better.
Imagine a speculative early-primary atoms-up progression, one emphasizing atoms as nucleons, and building from nucleosynthesis, through a sense of physical size/scale, to a broad grasp of modern material science. Insane amount of interdisciplinary work. But I even found ways to explore it, sort of kind of, and explorations like it - mainly conversations with "the usual suspects" before/after research talks around MIT and Harvard. Then covid. Now... has anyone heard of an online setting for discussing transformative improvement of science and engineering content? Even if we're back to normal next year, I'd appreciate finding a less ad hoc and restricted setting. Thanks.
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=Larimore+2020+preschool+vision&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=Lar...