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from Chapter Two:
Take, for example, two 7th grade science lessons on photosynthesis. In Mr. Randall's classroom, middle school science is taught through a combination of textbook work and teacher demonstration. Students perform experiments from time to time.... Students read a widely used 7th grade science textbook (Heimler, Daniel, and Lockard 1984), which explains that:
Photosynthesis (foht oh sinh thuh sus) is the chemical change that produces food. In photosynthesis, carbon dioxide gas and water are combined to produce sugar and oxygen. The sugar may be changed to starch. Sunlight is necessary for photosynthesis. It supplies the energy for the chemical change. The energy becomes locked in the sugar and starch molecules that are produced (pp. 176).Mr. Randall then talks about the role of chlorophyll and presents the chemical equation for photosynthesis: 6CO2 + 6H2O —> C6H12O6 + 6O2. The written explanation of the chemical equation indicates that when carbon dioxide and water are in the presence of energy (sunlight, in the case of photosynthesis), sugar and oxygen are produced. The sugar is used by the plant to make the cellulose that forms its cell walls and to make food for self-repairs and storage for later nourishment.
[snip]
This is the mimetic approach to learning. Students commit new information to their short-term memory for the purpose of mimicking an understanding of photosynthesis on an end-of-chapter test. There is little in the presentation of the information or the assessment strategies that challenges students' current beliefs about the way plants grow and the relationships among plants and other life forms. [ed.: do they have current beliefs about the way plants grow?]
[snip]
Contrast this approach to a second classroom, one in which the teacher, Ms. Martina, not only deleted the molecular equation and references to cell walls in her introductory lesson plan, but actually deleted all references to photosynthesis. Ms. Martina asked her students to think of systems with which they might have some experience and familiarity, and to indicate the product created, the energy source needed, and the raw materials used. She asked her students to consider, for example, their art classes and what they create there. Several students taking a “home technologies” class at the time were making malted milkshakes. They combined ingredients (malt, milk, and cocoa) in the presence of an external energy source (an electric blender) to produce a product (the milkshake). They did not readily come up with a by-product. But when they lit on an “appetite-wetting aroma” [sic] as a possibility, they became quite animated. [ed.: dollars to donuts these students are "animated" because they think this discussion is a joke] Another student, thinking of his health education class, described exercise as a system consisting of ingredients (a human body, weights, and exercise machines) acted on by an energy source (one's muscles) to generate a product (increased strength and muscle tone) and a by-product (a sense of well-being). These analogies generated enthusiasm about the students' home technologies and health class activities. [ed.: a class which, I guarantee you, these students refer to as "Homo and Health" outside the earshot of Mr. Brooks] The students engaged in interdisciplinary discussions with each other and Ms. Martina. [translation: the students horsed around in class; their parents taught them photosynthesis in time for the test]
[snip]
Though Ms. Martina's students didn't construct a biochemical understanding [ed.: check] of photosynthesis, and their examples were not completely analogous to the system of photosynthesis in terms of reversibility and complexity, [ed.: check] they did begin to appreciate that one way of trying to understand photosynthesis is as a systemic process yielding both a product and a by-product. [ed.: like an appetite-wetting aroma]
Chapter 2: Considering the Possibilities
In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms, Revised Edition
Why would the parents of Plainview Old Bethpage want to give this fellow the boot?
And why would the parents of Ridgewood object to his sudden appearance in their district?
I ask you.
9 comments:
Familiar text - very much like the articles they feed us in Education school... My former professor (Ed.class) visited our school recently and asked how I'm doing. So I told him the truth - I lecture 4 times a week, formal lab (to the extent I can create it by collecting pieces of a "used to be" equipment). "Well", he said, "remember, the lecture can keep the students engaged only for a limited time, like 15 minutes."
I wish he heard a student of mine explaining a seven grader who wants to be in Living Environment Regents next year WHAT IT TAKES to be successful in my class! "I take notes - all Ms.O. writes on the board AND all she is saying and not writing, all examples that she give, and draw all demonstrations with labels", she said. "And then I read her notes at home after every class and practice couple of questions from REview book. And I remember it all well." The girl had 126 average in my class for the year. And I had 15 students in three classes who had average scores above 100...
I also had a teacher from another middle school in Brooklyn visiting me recently. That school is going to introduce REgents next year, so Ms.X came for advice. I described my method of teaching and demonstrated my plan - I finished the curriculum bearely in time because of the various distractions such as Project weeks etc. happening in the school. Her school is no different - the have it all "inquiry-discovery". But looking at it reasonably: the CONTENT SUBJECTS cannot be taught by this "oh, lets go from milkshakes and then to photosynthesis (maybe), and lets spend a week - no, 3 weeks - sitting around on one concept that can be taught in 15 minutes"...
"Contrast this approach to a second classroom, one in which the teacher, Ms. Martina, not only deleted the molecular equation and references to cell walls in her introductory lesson plan, but actually deleted all references to photosynthesis."
If that's not dumbing down then I don't know what is.
"This is the mimetic approach to learning. Students commit new information to their short-term memory for the purpose of mimicking an understanding of photosynthesis on an end-of-chapter test."
Can't these constructivists conceive of the possibiliy that knowledge can be committed to long-term memory with understanding. How do university professors of science do it? With milkshakes? They probably can't consider that possibility because they hate memory.
What is short-term memory anyway? I gather it is distinct from working memory (extremely limited and fleeting). If ST memory is simply knowledge insufficiently internalized, assimilated and absorbed (I am straining to avoid saying "memorized"), then paradoxically the constructivists are railing against something they should welcome (the failure to commit to LT memory).
Speaking of memory . . . I wish I could find mine.
My kid and I were shopping for tennis shoes this afternoon. We found a style "to die for," but alas, the store did not have the size she needed in the color that she wanted. I decided that rather than trudge all over town looking for these shoes, we would go home and I would call around. (As an added benefit, I would be doing my part to be "green" as well.)
We each repeated the name of the brand several times, attempting to commit it to memory. It didn't work. We got home and the best that we could do was that the last word was "dogs" and the first word consisted of two syllables.
So here I sit, cursing myself for not having used a mnenomic device to commit the name to memory or to have at leaste written it down in the notebook I carry for that very purpose.
What is my point? Well, I realize that's a bit of a trivial example, and perhaps not particularly relelvant, but of course memory matters, from the trivial to the complex.
This caught my eye because my son once had a Scholastic dictionary for kids with all sorts of odd (wrong) syllables and pronunciations.
Photosynthesis
(foht oh sinh thuh sus)
It's perhaps a pet peeve of mine - dumbing down dictionaries, and wrong, too.
(fō'tō-sĭn'thĭ-sĭs)
Aaaah, I feel better.
"Why would the parents of Plainview Old Bethpage want to give this fellow the boot?"
Because he was clearly better than they deserved, ungrateful scum!
Hi, Verghis!
The science is pretty lousy, too.
They combined ingredients (malt, milk, and cocoa) in the presence of an external energy source (an electric blender) to produce a product (the milkshake). They did not readily come up with a by-product.
There is no by-product because there is no chemical reaction; a milkshake is a mixture, not the product of a reaction. The 'lesson' is not merely empty, but completely wrong. The difference between a physical process and a chemical one is not particularly intuitive at that level (particularly without content knowledge about molecular bonds, which I'm guessing they've skipped), and they've managed to get a fundamental lesson completely backwards right from the start.
Oh well. They'll pick it up on their own eventually. Right?
Also: I absolutely love that last excerpt.
Though Ms. Martina's students didn't construct a biochemical understanding of photosynthesis, and their examples were not completely analogous to the system of photosynthesis in terms of reversibility and complexity, they did begin to appreciate that one way of trying to understand photosynthesis is as a systemic process yielding both a product and a by-product.
Translation: the students didn't actually learn any chemistry or biology, but we did manage to bring them up to a pre-medieval level of scientific knowledge.
I think the analogy with the muscle-building activity fails even worse but why even go there?
The whole thing is so nutty I simply cannot believe it (please tell me this is a joke?).
The line I like best is this one:
These analogies generated enthusiasm about the students' home technologies and health class activities.
Like this is more important than learning any kind of content related to photsynthesis...in a lesson on photosynthesis?
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