summer 2009

In theory, C. is working through these books:

Megawords 6

Analyze, Organize, Write by Arthur Whimbey & Elizabeth Lynn Jenkins (text reconstruction)

Sentence Composing for High School: A Worktext on Sentence Variety and Maturity by Don Killgallon
Grammar for High School: A Sentence-Composing Approach---A Student Worktext by Don Killgallon & Jenny Killgallon
Sentence Combining Workbook by Pam Altman, et. al.

French by Association by Michael Gruenberg
Behind the Wheel French for the car^*
ALEKS Geometry

I have no idea whether the Killgallon books 'work,' whether Killgallon's exercises, in and of themselves, improve a person's writing. I don't care. I love them so much I'm insisting C. do them. I'm going to do the college book myself. Here's the Killgallons' web site.

As for the Whimbey/Jenkins book, I take Myra Linden's word for it:

"In a study of ‘before‘ and ‘after‘ papers of students who used text reconstruction, I concluded that text reconstruction was effective in helping students learn to organize their ideas into coherent paragraphs. The most marked improvement in their second samples was in content. Students were able to furnish specific details to support general statements. In addition, students showed consistent improvement in organization and style.

"I believe that this approach works because the constant practice in arrangement of content from the general to the specific provided by the text … fosters the most basic writing skills of presenting specific content and organizing it logically into a cohesive pattern. Students replace their faulty composing patterns with effective ones that become automatic skills. In addition, students who do significant amounts of text reconstruction learn indispensable techniques for effective study skills. It helps note-taking. It aids in learning outlining and summarizing skills, and it teaches the general-specific arrangement of ideas.

Why Johnny Can't Write by Myra J. Linden

^* Behind the Wheel Spanish & Spanish by Association for me -- also Fluenz

pop quiz

Are You Qualified to Teach Elementary School Math? (pdf file)

teach your babies to read, part 2

The persistent reading struggles and failure of nearly 40 percent of all American children, little improved over time, has led to aggressive government-funded efforts in school districts to train veteran teachers in the science of reading. The accumulated scientific findings of nearly 60 years of research gained the nation’s attention with the release of a number of significant reviews and compendia of the research beginning in 1990, but most notably the National Reading Panel report in 2000. The findings call for explicit, systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics, guided oral reading to improve fluency, direct and indirect vocabulary building, and exposure to a variety of reading comprehension strategies. All this attention on veteran teachers begs the question: How are future teachers being prepared to teach reading? In this study, the National Council on Teacher Quality makes a unique effort to learn what aspiring teachers are taught about reading instruction. From a randomly selected, representative sample of 72 education schools, NCTQ reviewed 223 required reading courses, including evaluations of syllabi as well as 227 required reading texts. Schools were scored on how well their courses presented the core components of the science of reading. The findings are alarming. Only 15 percent of the education schools provide future teachers with minimal exposure to the science. Moreover, course syllabi reveal a tendency to dismiss the scientific research in reading, continuing to espouse approaches to reading that will not serve up to 40 percent of all children. Course texts were equally disappointing. Only four of the 227 texts were rated as “acceptable” for use as a general, comprehensive textbook. This distressing trend in teacher training demands attention from federal and state governments, professional organizations dedicated to improving and supporting education schools, textbook publishers, and educations schools themselves. The report closes with recommendations to ameliorate this serious failure in adequately preparing teachers in the best practices of reading instruction.

What Education Schools Aren't Teaching About Reading (pdf file)
May 2006
National Council on Teacher Quality


special ed teachers not trained to remediate dyslexia
what ed schools aren't teaching about reading

dyslexia & special ed

Liz Ditz left the link for this story:

Most college special education masters programs do not include comprehensive instruction in reading for dyslexics.

Yet, dyslexics or children with reading disorders make up 70-80% of the special education students. Is there any wonder why special education reading scores are so low?

At best, most potential teachers will get just an overview in reading. Few colleges, if any, teach one of the few methodologies proven by the International Dyslexia Association. These methodologies are taught by private companies or certified individuals, not colleges.

The owners of the methodologies are not big text book publishers like Harcourt, SRA, etc that can afford lobbyists to push state politicians and administrators to approve their curriculum's. Publishers make money by selling hundreds of thousands of text books.

True research based proven methodologies for dyslexics are multi-sensory based. The original is Orton Gillingham. The rest are based on the theories of Orton Gillingham are Wilson, Slingerland and Spaulding.

The exception to the rule is Lindamood Bell LiPS (Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing) which is a proven multi-sensory methodology.

In order to use these methodologies properly, teachers must have intensive instruction, consistent mentoring and follow up. Teachers cannot go to a two day or one week workshop and then come back and teach the rest of the staff. Unfortunately, this is the current model in SFUSD. Last year's professional development calendar did not include a single workshop in reading instruction for dyslexics.

For the last 90 years nationwide, college teacher training programs and public schools have ignored the fact that Orton Gillingham (O-G) methodology works for dyslexic children, to the detriments of millions of children and society as a whole. Famous dyslexic Special Education attorney Pete Wright had a very hard time in school and was taught to read using Orton Gillingham methodology.

Ironically, Pete would advocate for a dyslexic girl named Shannon Carter in front of the supreme court. He would win a unanimous decision in 1993. The court ruled that the public school did not provide Shannon Carter with a free appropriate public education (FAPE). The court ruled to reimburse the parents who found an adequate private school which taught Shannon via the Orton Gillingham method.

There have been cases all over the country where the few parents who do fight back win when it comes to poor reading instruction. Even the dimmest hearing officer recognizes a child that can't read! With so much evidence available, one would think public schools would get the message, but they don't. Right now the deck is very much stacked against parents with the Office of Administrative Hearings in California. School districts win about 90% of the time. But even in that poisonous climate, a San Francisco Unified School District's "legal expert consultant" took a reading case to Court and lost. This student won 200 hours of Lindamood Bell tutoring. Read decision here

Is this how we spend money from the "rainy day" education fund? How much did this trial cost? Wouldn't it be a better idea to teach children how to read?

While politicians, educators, and administrators argue over reading, few listen to the sound, well researched International Dyslexia Association. With the advent of MRI's, whole new waves of understanding and research about how well these methodologies work have been published. There have been articles in Newsweek, great documentaries of powerful evidence of neuroscience but the public school officials and college special education departments still don't pay attention.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) demanded evidence based reading programs with research behind them. Great idea. Except all kinds of educational publishers eager to get their piece of the money pie, came up with watered down textbooks and programs claiming to have O-G traits pushed their wares on gullible public school administrators who do not have the knowledge to be educated consumers. Publishers were just interested in just making money. School district administrators do not understand the difference between the "at risk" population vs Specific Learning Disabled population.

Neuroscience has proven beyond a doubt over and over that these are the methodologies that work.

It's a local and national shame.

The Best Kept Secret in Special Education
by Robin Hansen
March 29, 2009
SF Special Education Examiner

Under the heading it's always worse than you think, see: What Education Schools Aren't Teaching about Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren't Learning

Fourth of July

how to chart it

This is synchronicity.

While I was upstairs finishing a post about how to chart stuff, C. was downstairs discovering GraphJam.

Teacher in America

Chapter 10: Tongues and Areas

Is a Frenchman a man?
Yes.
Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan’ he talk like a man? You answer me dat!
JIM AND HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Shortly before setting foot in the United States, I tried to learn something about the country from an old guidebook which had been around the house for years. With my imperfect command of the language, one sentence near the beginning, I remember, filled me with apprehension:

The European tongues are taught in the high schools all over the country, but the instruction is purely theoretical, and the number who can talk French, German, or Italian is very small. Tourists who wish to travel among the remoter districts of New England should be well acquainted with the language, which is the English of Elizabeth with a few local idioms. [1]

Having no idea whether I should be called upon to travel in the “remoter districts of New England,” much less what was meant by the “English of Elizabeth,” I pinned all my faith on this “theoretical instruction” of American youth in European tongues. I now know what it means It means that boys and girls “take” French or Spanish or German (never Italian: the guidebook is wrong) for three, four, or five years before entering college, only to discover there that they cannot read, speak, or understand it. The word for this type of instruction is not “theoretical” but “hypothetical.” Its principle is “If it were possible to learn a foreign language in the way I have been taught it, I should now know that language.”

Various things follow. One is that Berlitz Schools do a thriving business with people who are suddenly confronted with the need to travel abroad. Another is that there is a lifelong Sehnsucht about foreign tongues, which quack advertisements seek to satisfy: “Astonish your friends by speaking to the waiter in French.” A third is that advanced college teaching and graduate study are hampered at every turn by the students’ inability to pick up and read important foreign works. Every year in my senior and graduate classes, I ask those present to write after their names on the class list the languages that they know. Most of them put down French or German or both. But when they come to choose research topics and I suggest a foreign item for their bibliography, they retract their “knowledge” with an embarrassed smile. Some of these students are at the very time “taking” the language in college and some have passed the so-called proficiency test.

There are exceptions to this generality, but most often the exceptional student turns out to have lived abroad or had relatives who speak the tongue in question. When the Army, the Navy, and the civilian war services needed native-born linguists who were also college graduates in the prime of life, they discovered that they had to set up their own language schools and cram German, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, and French into people whose previous immunity to language seemed absolute. They could “take” it forever; it wouldn’t “take.”

Everybody knows the outcome: they’re all linguists now. My students send me Christmas cards in Japanese, or inform me that when they return they plan to study under my sponsorship the relations of the Third French Republic and the Tsarist regime. I see very clearly that I am going to have to learn Russian.

Characteristically, college administrators have jumped to the conclusion that the Army must have some secret “method”—held back until M-day—which the colleges ought to find out and apply. Campuses buzz with the spirit of reform, the language departments themselves being divided between the Old Guard, which defends its former “methods,” and the New, whose proposals combine elements of the army training with Area studies. I shall explain what these are in a moment.

Meanwhile, the Army and Navy’s victorious inoculation of the antilinguistic American boy is not hard to account for. It was not a secret; it was mainly Concentration. The men were segregated, put in charge of foreign instructors, drilled morning, noon, and night under conditions of prisonlike rigidity. Standards were high and failures from laziness or incapacity were weeded out as fast as they shoed up. A competitive game was set going, which keyed up the good minds to outdo themselves. Outside the class hours, the men would quiz each other, talk, joke, and write in the language they were learning. Two powerful motives were at work: the negative fear of not keeping up and therefore being returned to the ranks, and the positive wish for a commission and the pay that goes with it.

Clearly if these or similar motives could be brought into play in high school or college, language teaching—or for that matter the teaching of any subject—would yield astonishing results. If I did not mention as an incentive the very real desire to discharge a patriotic duty, it is because that motive already finds a parallel in the civilian’s academic career. The man with the moral fervor of patriotism is likely to be the man with the moral fervor of scholarship; in both cases, the student sees himself as owing a duty to something greater than himself. This kind of ambition no system can demand; it can only use it when found.

1 New England: A Handbook for Travellers (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1873).

Teacher in America by Jacques Barzun
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1981
first published: 1944
pp. 185-188

you are here

from Paul B:

Kids can't do 6 times 7 because they are 'taught' multiple ways to multiply. Then they discover the one they like best (usually involves fingers) and stick to it until somewhere along the way they are given a calculator to expedite things.

They are assessed subjectively. They are promoted without regard to those assessments. And finally, they're never given targeted remediation or practice that is up to the task of keeping them on track.

Other than that there's not much wrong.

I have already confessed my own problems with 6 times 7.

help desk: how to chart progress

Years ago the director of the charter school for autistic kids Jimmy & Andrew were attending told me that the only way to turn 'data' into positive reinforcement was to chart it.

That was a revelation. I already knew about the importance of "taking data," as behavior analysts call it. Taking data seems to be a pivotal behavior in behavioral treatment; just keeping track of what you're doing -- or what your goofy kids are doing -- helps. Knowing what you're doing changes what you're doing.

This is true even for children with severe autism, by the way. I've seen it. The minute you start counting & recording a child's behaviors to get a baseline, the behavior changes. It's uncanny.

In any event, the director's friend was working on his dissertation and had been recording his word count every day. But he'd stalled out & was stuck. Blocked.

She told him he needed to chart his data. It isn't good enough just to write down numbers day in and day out, you have to see a line going up-up-up (or, in the case of weight loss, down-down-down) if your daily numbers are going to serve as a force for good.

Practically the instant the words were out of her mouth, I knew she was right, and I've been trying to chart stuff ever since. Problem is, I've never been able to figure out how to chart the things I need to chart. Weight loss is easy; it's weight against date. Page counts are easy. Pages against date & keep a running total.

But I've never worked out how to chart the other phases of writing (or anything else): planning, organizing, reading, interviewing, etc.

Just this week, I'm trying to figure out how to chart C's studies for the summer. He has a bunch of reading to do for Hogwarts, which is easy. Last summer I made a simple chart for both of us that worked like a charm. It's a good thing, too, because he had to read 2500 pages in 8 weeks. He may have been one of the few kids in the school who actually did it, and we have the schedule and the chart to thank for it.

This summer I want him to do a bunch of other things, too. On the advice of friends, I've decided to pay him to do some but not all of them, and I have no idea how to record these activities in a manner that will be a) clear and b) motivating.

Here's the scheme:



I don't know what to do with this, chart-wise.

Plus I'm befuddled on the question of positive reinforcement and intrinsic motivation, but that's another story.

Are there books to read on this subject?

And: has anyone used Chartdog?

Explanation of standard celeration chart
50 Google chart tricks for your next classroom presentation
free behavior modification charts

Physics Education and Failures in Conceptual Understanding

For decades, physics professors in universities and colleges in the US have known there is something wrong with physics studies in their schools. Their own physics majors have a poor understanding of basic concepts in mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and quantum mechanics.

Journals like The American Journal of Physics (devoted to teaching and pedagogy at the university level) and Physics Teacher (the same for high school and lower) bring up these issues, with a variety of proposed changes and solutions both at the individual classroom level and at the higher theory-of-ed level. D. Hestenes at ASU and his colleagues have done work in this area, both in questioning the failures of pedagogy and developing some solutions. First, the problems.

D. Hestenes wrote in "What Do Graduate Oral Exams Tell Us?" (Am J. Phys. 63:1069 (1995)) of finding a quote from physicist W. F. G. Swann, in "The Teaching of Physics", (Am. J. Phys. 19, 182-187 (1950)):

"Much can be said about oral examinations for doctor’s degrees, and in my judgment not much can be said that is good. I have sat in innumerable examinations for Ph.D. at very many different universities, sometimes as a member of the permanent faculty and sometimes as a visitor. In almost every case the knowledge exhibited was such that if it represented the true state of mind of the student, he never should have passed. However, after the examination is concluded there is usually a discussion to the effect that: "Well, So-and-so got tied up pretty badly, but I happen to know that he is a very good man," etc., etc., and so finally he is passed."

Hestenes goes on to quote Swann as saying [A student] "passes his tests frequently [including graduate comprehensive exams], alas, with very little comprehension of what he has been doing."

Hestenes diagnoses the problem as this:

It seems not to have occurred to the faculty that dismal oral exams may be symptoms of a severe deficiency in the entire physics curriculum. I submit that there is good reason to believe that they are symptomatic of a general failure to develop student skills in qualitative modeling and analysis.

These general failures mean that even students who have the grades to appear to have excellent mastery of the material do not understand basic elements of the material they have "learned".

It also suggests that college students who fail to understand the material may end up there because their confusion prevents them from attaining the mastery the "good" students have.

Of course, the errors didn't just start in college. Generally speaking, proper physical intuition is lacking in students who took high school physics, even in those who did well. Hestenes writes in "Force Concept Inventory", (Physics Teacher, Vol. 30, March 1992, 141-158)

"it has been established that1 (1) commonsense beliefs about motion and force are incompatible with Newtonian concepts in most respects, (2) conventional physics instruction produces little change in these beliefs, and (3) this result is independent of the instructor and the mode of instruction. The implications could not be more serious. Since the students have evidently not learned the most basic Newtonian concepts, they must have failed to comprehend most of the material in the course. "

Hestenes et. al. wrote the Force Concept Inventory, a multiple choice test whose aim is to "to probe student beliefs on this matter and how these beliefs compare with the many dimensions of the Newtonian concept. " It poses questions that force a choice between the correct Newtonian answer for an explanation of a given system, and other commonsense explanations that are actually misconceptions. After the test, interviews are done to determine students' reasoning.

Here's an example of a misconception that the FCI aims to tease out of a student:

[The misconception of "impetus":]
The term "impetus" dates back to pre-Galilean times before the concept was discredited scientifically. Of course, students never use the word "impetus"; they might use any of a number of terms, but "force" is perhaps the most common. Impetus is conceived to be an inanimate "motive power" or "intrinsic force" that keeps things moving. This, of course, contradicts Newton’s First Law, which is why Impetus in Table II is assigned the same number as the First Law in Table I. Evidence that a student believes in some kind of impetus is therefore evidence that the First Law is not understood.

The FCI has been given to thousands of college and high school students. The above paper details the results on the FCI, given as a pre and post test to both high school and undergraduate physics courses, with tremendous detail on similarities and differences across classrooms in the country. More, it provides strong evidence that traditional college physics pedagogy isn't doing anything to teach physics to the students who take it:

"The pretest/post test Inventory scores of 52/63 for [The Regular Physics Mechanics course at Arizona State University] are nearly identical to the 51/64 scores obtained with the Diagnostic for the same course...we have post test averages of 60 and 63 for two other professors teaching the same course. Thus, we have the incredible result of nearly identical post test scores for seven different professors (with more than a thousand students). It is hard to imagine stronger statistical evidence for the original conclusion that Diagnostic posttest scores for conventional instruction are independent of the instructor. One might infer from this that the modest 11% gain for Arizona State Reg. in Table III is achieved by the students on their own. "

Which brings us back to the state of physics majors going to graduate school:

One of us (Hestenes) interviewed 16 first-year graduate students beginning graduate mechanics at Arizona State University. The interviews were in depth on the questions they had missed on the Inventory (more than half an hour for most students). Half the students were American and half were foreign nationals (mostly Chinese). Only two of the students (both Chinese) exhibited a perfect understanding of all physical concepts on the Inventory, though one of them missed several questions because of a severe English deficiency. These two also turned out to be far and away the best students in the mechanics class, with near perfect scores on every test and problem assignment. Every one of the other students exhibited a deficient understanding of buoyancy, as mentioned earlier. The most severe misconceptions were found in three Americans who clearly did not understand Newton’s Third Law (detected by missing question 13) and exhibited reading deficiencies to boot. Two of these still retained the Impetus concept, while the other had misconceptions about friction. Not surprisingly, the student with the most severe misconceptions failed graduate mechanics miserably, while the other two managed to squeak through the first year of graduate school on probation.

Is it just that the Chinese students who manage to get into US physics grad schools are such creme de la creme that they are perfect? Or is Chinese instruction vastly superior?

(And for those who wonder about American instruction in other subjects, read this and weep:)

One disturbing observation from the interviews was that five of the eight Americans, as well as five of the others, exhibited moderate to severe difficulty understanding English text. In most cases the difficulty could be traced to overlooking the critical role of "little words" such as prepositions in determining meaning. As a consequence, we discarded two interesting problems from our original version of the Inventory because they were misread more often than not.

And yet, those who make it through physics graduate school to professordom mostly correct these errors, at least in mechanics. (Though not necessarily. In quantum mechanics, new professors are notorious for teaching elements of the material incorrectly. In special relativity, David Mermin, prof at Cornell, believes many professors teach the entire subject wrong. (He discusses this in a paper called something like "how to teach Special Relativity.") Hestenes suggests this is due to the realities of post quals grad school: the day in, day out teaching and researching refine one's intuition over and over again.

I think this implies something else as well. Error correction in intuition can only occur and stick if the mastery of the manipulation of the equations is so strong that you (correctly) believe what they tell you. If you can be forced to do the math on the board, and forced to read and think about what it says, then you can learn the truth counter to what your intuition tells you, but only if you are utterly sure you did the math on the board correctly.

If instead, you doubt yourself, doubt your manipulation of equations, doubt your application of the laws as you understand them, then you will get confused, doubt your answer, default to your intuition, and scrap learning the correct way to think.

That means you need a tremendous amount of mastery. How in the world to achieve that?

Hestenes' answer --changing how physics is taught in high school and in college--will be explored in a week or so.


Physics Education and Failures in Conceptual Understanding
Fixing Physics Education: Modeling Instruction
Physics Education Continued
More Modeling Instruction: Techniques

Richard on proof by obfuscation

re: TERC on Establishing Truth in Geometry

Oh really .... I don't know where to begin!!!!

"establishing the validity of ideas is critical to mathematics"

I know straight away that my blood pressure will need to be checked by the time I get to the end of this!!!

But wait, there's more!!!

"Most mathematics instruction and textbooks, however, lead us to believe that mathematicians make use only of formal proof -- logical, deductive reasoning based on axioms."

Of course, that should read "Most mathematics instruction and textbooks AND ALL MATHEMATICIANS ..."

"evidence for its validity in the form of a proof"

By this stage, it's pretty obvious to me that the author isn't a mathematician. "Validity in the form of a proof" ..... what other type of validity is there??

Of course, the trained mathematician should have their 'proof by obfuscation' alarm bells ringing by now.

"For a mathematician, often this internal testing can take the form of proof as one attempts to perform the socially accepted criticism of one's argument."

Is this even English? [ed.: I've been asking myself the same question. When I finally learn how to diagram sentences, I'll be able to answer it.]

"However, does proof convince students? Do they see it as a way to establish the validity of their ideas or, as Hanna (1989) suggests, as a set of formal rules unconnected to their personal mathematical activity?"

They'd better see it as (ahem) "a way to establish the validity of their ideas" or their teacher hasn't really communicated the difference between Science and Mathematics too clearly.

Worthy of mention is the desire to "convince students" .... you may accuse me of semantic nitpicking here, but it's important!!

"Ironically, the most effective path to engendering meaningful use of proof in secondary school geometry is to avoid formal proof for much of students' work."

Which roughly translates as "In order to save the village we had to destroy it!"

---------------------------------

I think Melanie Philips (British author) summed it up best in her book 'All Must Have Prizes':

"A fundamental shift in emphasis from knowledge transmitted by the teacher to skills and process 'discovered' by the child has undermined the fundamental premises of mathematics itself. The absolutes of exactness and proof on which the subject is based have been replaced by approximation, guesswork and context."

Melanie Phillips, All Must Have Prizes

Mastery and Conceptual Understanding in Physics

For decades, physics professors in universities and colleges in the US have known there is something wrong with physics studies in their schools. Their own physics majors have a poor understanding of basic concepts in mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and quantum mechanics.

Journals like The American Journal of Physics (devoted to teaching and pedagogy at the university level) and Physics Teacher (the same for high school and lower) bring up these issues, with a variety of proposed changes and solutions both at the individual classroom level and at the higher theory-of-ed level. D. Hestenes at ASU and his colleagues have done work in this area, both in questioning the failures of pedagogy and developing some solutions. First, the problems.

D. Hestenes wrote in "What Do Graduate Oral Exams Tell Us?" (Am J. Phys. 63:1069 (1995)) of finding a quote from physicist W. F. G. Swann, in "The Teaching of Physics", (Am. J. Phys. 19, 182-187 (1950)):

"Much can be said about oral examinations for doctor’s degrees, and in my judgment not much can be said that is good. I have sat in innumerable examinations for Ph.D. at very many different universities, sometimes as a member of the permanent faculty and sometimes as a visitor. In almost every case the knowledge exhibited was such that if it represented the true state of mind of the student, he never should have passed. However, after the examination is concluded there is usually a discussion to the effect that: "Well, So-and-so got tied up pretty badly, but I happen to know that he is a very good man," etc., etc., and so finally he is passed."

Hestenes goes on to quote Swann as saying [A student] "passes his tests frequently [including graduate comprehensive exams], alas, with very little comprehension of what he has been doing."

Hestenes diagnoses the problem as this:

It seems not to have occurred to the faculty that dismal oral exams may be symptoms of a severe deficiency in the entire physics curriculum. I submit that there is good reason to believe that they are symptomatic of a general failure to develop student skills in qualitative modeling and analysis.

Of course, the errors didn't just start in college. Generally speaking, proper physical intuition is lacking in students who took high school physics, even in those who did well. Hestenes writes in "Force Concept Inventory", (Physics Teacher, Vol. 30, March 1992, 141-158)

"it has been established that1 (1) commonsense beliefs about motion and force are incompatible with Newtonian concepts in most respects, (2) conventional physics instruction produces little change in these beliefs, and (3) this result is independent of the instructor and the mode of instruction. The implications could not be more serious. Since the students have evidently not learned the most basic Newtonian concepts, they must have failed to comprehend most of the material in the course. "

Hestenes et. al. wrote the Force Concept Inventory, a multiple choice test whose aim is to "to probe student beliefs on this matter and how these beliefs compare with the many dimensions of the Newtonian concept. " It poses questions that force a choice between the correct Newtonian answer for an explanation of a given system, and other commonsense explanations that are actually misconceptions. After the test, interviews are done to determine students' reasoning.

Here's an example of a misconception that the FCI aims to tease out of a student:

[The misconception of "impetus":]
The term "impetus" dates back to pre-Galilean times before the concept was discredited scientifically. Of course, students never use the word "impetus"; they might use any of a number of terms, but "force" is perhaps the most common. Impetus is conceived to be an inanimate "motive power" or "intrinsic force" that keeps things moving. This, of course, contradicts Newton’s First Law, which is why Impetus in Table II is assigned the same number as the First Law in Table I. Evidence that a student believes in some kind of impetus is therefore evidence that the First Law is not understood.

The FCI has been given to thousands of college and high school students. The above paper details the results on the FCI, given as a pre and post test to both high school and undergraduate physics courses, with tremendous detail on similarities and differences across classrooms in the country. More, it provides strong evidence that traditional college physics pedagogy isn't doing anything to teach physics to the students who take it:

"The pretest/post test Inventory scores of 52/63 for [The Regular Physics Mechanics course at Arizona State University] are nearly identical to the 51/64 scores obtained with the Diagnostic for the same course...we have post test averages of 60 and 63 for two other professors teaching the same course. Thus, we have the incredible result of nearly identical post test scores for seven different professors (with more than a thousand students). It is hard to imagine stronger statistical evidence for the original conclusion that Diagnostic posttest scores for conventional instruction are independent of the instructor. One might infer from this that the modest 11% gain for Arizona State Reg. in Table III is achieved by the students on their own. "

Which brings us back to the state of physics majors going to graduate school:

One of us (Hestenes) interviewed 16 first-year graduate students beginning graduate mechanics at Arizona State University. The interviews were in depth on the questions they had missed on the Inventory (more than half an hour for most students). Half the students were American and half were foreign nationals (mostly Chinese). Only two of the students (both Chinese) exhibited a perfect understanding of all physical concepts on the Inventory, though one of them missed several questions because of a severe English deficiency. These two also turned out to be far and away the best students in the mechanics class, with near perfect scores on every test and problem assignment. Every one of the other students exhibited a deficient understanding of buoyancy, as mentioned earlier. The most severe misconceptions were found in three Americans who clearly did not understand Newton’s Third Law (detected by missing question 13) and exhibited reading deficiencies to boot. Two of these still retained the Impetus concept, while the other had misconceptions about friction. Not surprisingly, the student with the most severe misconceptions failed graduate mechanics miserably, while the other two managed to squeak through the first year of graduate school on probation.

Is it just that the Chinese students who manage to get into US physics grad schools are such creme de la creme that they are perfect? Or is Chinese instruction vastly superior?

(And for those who wonder about American instruction in other subjects, read this and weep:)

One disturbing observation from the interviews was that five of the eight Americans, as well as five of the others, exhibited moderate to severe difficulty understanding English text. In most cases the difficulty could be traced to overlooking the critical role of "little words" such as prepositions in determining meaning. As a consequence, we discarded two interesting problems from our original version of the Inventory because they were misread more often than not.

And yet, those who make it through physics graduate school to professordom mostly correct these errors, at least in mechanics. (Though not necessarily. In quantum mechanics, new professors are notorious for teaching elements of the material incorrectly. In special relativity, David Mermin, prof at Cornell, believes many professors teach the entire subject wrong. (He discusses this in a paper called something like "how to teach Special Relativity.") Hestenes suggests this is due to the realities of post quals grad school: the day in, day out teaching and researching refine one's intuition over and over again.

I think this implies something else he doesn't say. Error correction in intuition can only occur and stick if the mastery of the manipulation of the equations is so strong that you believe what they tell you. If you can be forced to do the math on the board, and forced to read and think about what it says, then you can learn the truth counter to what your intuition tells you, but only if you are utterly sure you did the math on the board correctly.

If instead, you doubt yourself, doubt your manipulation of equations, doubt your application of the laws as you understand them, then you will get confused, doubt your answer, default to your intuition, and scrap learning the correct way to think.

That means you need a tremendous amount of mastery. How in the world to achieve that?

Hestenes' answer --changing how physics is taught in high school and in college--will be explored in a week or so.


Physics Education and Failures in Conceptual Understanding
Fixing Physics Education: Modeling Instruction
Physics Education Continued
More Modeling Instruction: Techniques

test

what time does blogger think it is

who made the list

Curriculum Matters links to the list of people writing the Common Core Standards.

I don't see any parent reps.


CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

no one can teach

In reality, no one can teach mathematics. Effective teachers are those who can stimulate students to learn mathematics. Educational research offers compelling evidence that students learn mathematics well only when they construct their own mathematical understanding (MSEB and National Research Council 1989, 58).

Constructivist Learning and Teaching

Time to put the public back in public schools.


CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

What Is Constructivism?

Constructivist Learning and Teaching
Douglas H. Clements
State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260
Michael T. Battista
Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242



CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

TERC on Establishing Truth in Geometry

No one would deny that establishing the validity of ideas is critical to mathematics, both for professional mathematicians and for students. But how do people establish "truth"; how can they prove things? According to Martin and Harel (1989), in everyday life, people consider "proof" to be "what convinces me." Most mathematics instruction and textbooks, however, lead us to believe that mathematicians make use only of formal proof -- logical, deductive reasoning based on axioms.

But mathematicians most often "find" truth by methods that are intuitive or empirical in nature (Eves 1972). In fact, the process by which new mathematics is created is belied by the deductive format in which it is recorded (Lakatos 1976). In creating mathematics, problems are posed, examples analyzed, conjectures made, counterexamples offered, and conjectures revised; a theorem results when this refinement and validation of ideas answers a significant question. Hanna (1989) argues that because mathematical results are presented formally by mathematicians in the form of theorems and proofs, this rigorous practice is mistakenly seen by many as the core of mathematical practice. It is then assumed that "learning mathematics must involve training in the ability to create this form" (pp.22-23). The presentation obscures the mental activity that produced the results.

In fact, according to Bell (1976), personal conviction grows out of internal testing and forming a judgment about whether to accept or reject a conjecture. Later, one subjects this judgment to criticism by others, presenting not only the generalization formed but evidence for its validity in the form of a proof. For a mathematician, often this internal testing can take the form of proof as one attempts to perform the socially accepted criticism of one's argument.

In sum, formally presenting the results of mathematical thought in terms of proofs is meaningful to mathematicians as a method for establishing the validity of ideas. However, does proof convince students? Do they see it as a way to establish the validity of their ideas or, as Hanna (1989) suggests, as a set of formal rules unconnected to their personal mathematical activity?

Let me guess.

No?

No, students do not see proof as a way to establish the validity of their ideas?

Is that it?

Conclusion

Ironically, the most effective path to engendering meaningful use of proof in secondary school geometry is to avoid formal proof for much of students' work.

I had a feeling.

By focusing instead on justifying ideas while helping students build the visual and empirical foundations for higher levels of geometric thought, we can lead students to appreciate the need for formal proof. Only then will they be able to use it meaningfully as a mechanism for justifying ideas.
Geometry and Truth
by Michael T. Battista and Douglas Clements

Only then, after sophomore year has come to an end and so has geometry.

Here's a question.

How many sophomores in high school have mathematical ideas?

Dobbs Ferry adopts Singapore Math

District adds new program to Springhurst

Robyne Camp, who was elected to the board in May, has asked the district to pilot Primary Mathematics in 2 first grade classes next fall and to give parents the choice of enrolling their child in the pilot class or in a class using Trailblazers.

This passage is one to cite often:

Dobbs Ferry isn’t alone in rethinking its approach to teaching math. In recent years, there has been a shift away from more traditional methodology, including so-called “reform” math programs like Trailblazers which have drawn criticism from some teachers and parents.

time to put the public back in public schools

National Coalition Presents "Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards and Assessments" and Seeks Seat at National Standards Writing Table

The United States Coalition for World Class Math, a new non-partisan organization of concerned parents collaborating with professional mathematicians, educators, and others to promote improvements in K-12 mathematics education, has just issued its "Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards and Assessments." It is also asking to be included in the decision-making process for the national mathematics standards currently being developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in concert with several other educational organizations.

"Extraordinary numbers of grassroots groups have formed in recent years to learn more about current issues in mathematics education and to promote improvements in K-12 mathematics curricula," says Coalition co-founder Timotha Trigg. "Many parents believe there is already a crisis in mathematics education and fear that poor standards, if adopted by states on a national scale, would make the situation even worse."

For example, the most recent Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) found that only 6% of U.S. eighth grade students perform at the advanced level in mathematics, whereas 40 - 45% of eighth graders in top-performing countries reach this level. The poor performance of U.S. students on these and other state, national, and international assessments has not only spurred interest in creating national mathematics standards, it has also motivated many parent groups to unite under a single banner and to design a document setting forth their own principles for K-12 mathematics standards and assessments.

Jill Gladstone, who helped to spearhead the Coalition, states, "This document is intended to help inform the Common Core State Standards Initiative, the 46-state effort that will result in K-12 mathematics standards and assessments for public school students in participating states." Key points of the Coalition's Design Principles, found at United States Coalition for World Class Math, include:

Top-rated mathematics standards (MA, IN, and CA) should be used as a model; University mathematicians must play a key role in establishing priorities and ensuring mathematical content is appropriate and clear in both standards and assessments; and The findings and recommendations of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which reviewed more than 16,000 research studies, must be followed.

Gladstone adds, "Our website is generating a tremendous amount of interest nationwide. Each week, at least one new state chapter is being formed by parents who are counting on us to make their voices heard. These parents have earned a seat at the decision-making table as a core of common mathematics standards and assessments is constructed. We look forward to participating as a full partner in the effort to create world class mathematics standards and assessments for our children."

Contact Information:
Jill Gladstone 908-672-2070
Timotha Trigg 610-388-6220
E-Mail: USWCmath @ yahoo.com
Website: www.usworldclassmath.org

CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

comments needed

Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards


CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

edweek
educationweek

Don't Get That College Degree

Here’s an alarming article by Jack Hough from the New York Post that states:

“The four-year college degree has come to cost too much and prove too little. It's now a bad deal for the average student, family, employer, professor and taxpayer.”

It tracks two 18 year olds who both save the same amount of money (about $16,000) for college. One gets accepted to a college, the other does not. Both spend their lives making average incomes for their respective conditions; one with, and one without a college degree. Both set aside the same % amount of their respective salaries for their entire working lives. The grad uses the set aside for 12 years to pay off the loans and then starts saving at the same rate as the non-grad (who has been saving already for 16 years). The high school grad has all the saved up college money and a 16 year head start on investing a lesser amount of money each year.

At age 65, one person has accumulated savings of $1.4 million, the other just $400 thousand. Read the article to find out who the millionaire is.

Lest you think it’s just about money, read on…

“It's crass, you might think, to reduce education to a financial decision. An educated citizenry is healthier, more tolerant, more politically engaged and more fulfilled than an ignorant one. But I refer above to degrees, not education. The two are not the same, even if policymakers talk as though they are.”

Employers want a degree because it indicates to them that applicants have learned the “foundations of human knowledge” but here is a sampling of what passes for courses that fulfill core degree requirements at major universities.

“History of Comic Book Art (Indiana University), History and Philosophy of Dress (Texas Tech University) and Campus Culture and Drinking (Duke University)”

Couple meaningless core courses with grade inflation and you’ve got degrees that don’t mean anything. Employers are being suckered. Hyperinflation of tuitions in an age where knowledge is incredibly accessible for free, means students are being suckered. And last but not least, colleges spend huge amounts of time now doing remediation so parents too are being suckered for the 13 years preceding college.

The article proposes a fascinating concept, the ‘knowledge transcript’ to replace degrees. It’s sort of a tree diagram that describes all of the branches of knowledge components that a student has mastered as certified by standardized tests. It doesn't say a thing about how you got the knowledge, only that you've got it. Such a system would crush the elite college's ability to deliver crap at hyper-inflated rates.

I’d like to see knowledge transcripts in K-12 too. Maybe this is too much transparency to hope for but wow, does it make sense!

NCTE presents: Phonics Phacts

As risk-takers and decision-makers themselves, students make many choices about their own learning, within parameters established by the teacher.

Some Key Principles of a Whole Language Perspective on Learning and Teaching, courtesy of the NCTE

The writer is talking about elementary school children 'making a choice' about what materials will help them learn to read, write, do arithmetic, and learn science and history.

That's a risk, alright.


"Phonics Phacts"

under the banyan tree

from Paul:

Years ago, when I was an engineering manager, I had this Indian guy working for me. He was a graduate of IIT, India's equivalent to MIT or maybe Stanford. To qualify for IIT you have to be in the top 1-2% of applicants. He was incredibly smart and unlike a lot of young engineers he was also able to think out of the box. He could push the enevelope. Where his peers were better at just executing somebody elses plan, he could come up with the vision.

One day I asked him about his schooling. He said that except for IIT his entire education took place under a tree in the center of his village with a village elder/teacher/wiseman type of guy. I'm just guessing here because at the time I never thought to ask, but my bet is that this guy didn't go to a fancy ed school. We're not talking marble halls, olympic pools, or multimedia classrooms. There were no bulletin boards, reflections, projects, or discoveries. There was no group work, spiral curriculum, or state standards either. Just a smart man, a willing student, and the transfer of knowledge, probably not unlike what took place for the 10,000 years before we started education research.

Makes me go hmmmmmmmm?

I've been wondering for a while now whether you reach a tipping point: is there a point at which you're spending so much money on a school that quality declines?

I don't know the answer but the question relates to Gawande's article on The Cost Conundrum in medicine.

iatrogenic LD

Vicky S asks:

What percentage of identified learning disabilities do you suppose is inadvertantly caused by our schools, their teaching methods, and curricula?

I've been trying to suss this out for a while now. This week I found an estimate of the percent of reading problems that could be prevented:

We estimate that the number of children who are typically identified as poor readers and served through either special education or compensatory education programs (as well as children with significant reading difficulties who are not formally identified and served) could be reduced by up to 70 percent through early identification and prevention programs.

Chapter 12: Rethinking Learning Disabilities (pdf file)
Reid Lyon, Jack M. Fletcher, Sally E. Shaywitz, Bennett A. Shaywitz, Joseph K. Torgesen, Frank B. Wood, Ann Schulte, and Richard Olson
Rethinking Special Education for a New Century

I have the impression that most kids identified as having learning disabilities are struggling readers but if palisadesk or Liz Ditz are around they can let us know whether that's correct.

advertisements for myself

from a longtime member of ktm, whose high school is as good as its ranking in U.S. News:

X. and I just returned from our local Barnes and Noble. Under a sign labeled "Required School Reading" were several copies of Animals in Translation. Other books on the table included For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Great Gatsby, Blink, Night, The Cannery, Of Mice and Men, Animal Farm, Romeo and Juliet (and lots more). We decided it was quite an honor to have one's book included with such famous titles.

I am thrilled!

Obi-Wan on what means 'teaching'

Personally, I find the whole thing deeply insulting.

For all the thousands of years of human existence, teaching has meant one thing, and one thing alone. 

For a few years, a bunch of hippies told us that "teaching" meant the exact opposite of that, and that we couldn't do that thing that used to be called teaching. We went through the motions of their BS while they were looking, and taught our kids the right way when they weren't.

Now, they've rediscovered teaching, think they need a new term for it, and my district thinks I need to attend a week's worth of in-services to know how to do it.

I've got two words for the whole educational theory crowd, and they ain't gonna like the first one.

Obi-Wan is a math teacher, by the by.

next time, try Core Knowledge

When it opened its doors in 2006, Philadelphia's School of the Future (SOF) was touted as a high school that would revolutionize education: It would teach at-risk students critical 21st-century skills needed for college and the work force by emphasizing project-based learning, technology, and community involvement. But three years, three superintendents, four principals, and countless problems later, experts at a May 28 panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) agreed: The Microsoft-inspired project has been a failure so far.

wow

First Michael Jackson, now this. What a week. Who could have seen this coming?

"Microsoft chose to ... assign a team of educators and technologists to work in concert with the school system and the surrounding community to create a sustainable learning environment," said Mary Cullinane, Microsoft's lead on the project and one of the school's initial architects, in 2006.

By creating a general-enrollment school that was paid for, staffed, and operated by the public school system, project organizers aimed to create a model that could be replicated easily in other districts. (See "‘School of the Future' opens doors.")

The components of the school also were considered to be progressive. From alternative school hours to laptops for every student, from a customizable school portal to campus-wide wireless access, and from a panel to design 21st-century curriculum to a new teacher hiring model, the SOF was thought to be a sure winner.

"We naively thought, I guess, that by providing a beautiful building and great resources, these things would automatically yield change. They didn't," said Jan Biros, associate vice president for instructional technology support and campus outreach at Drexel University and a former member of the SOF Curriculum Planning Committee.

That's the difference between me and Bill Gates.

When I have a naive idea, the city of Philadelphia doesn't give me $63 million dollars to inflict it on other people's children.

Microsoft's expertise was based on what the company calls the 6 "I"s: introspection, investigation, inclusion, innovation, implementation, and--again--introspection. It was up to the Curriculum Planning Committee to design the underlying principles and goals for the school, based on this framework. 



However, these principles too often seemed unclear. 



You think?

Although the technology itself was not supposed to trump basic classroom practices, Microsoft and the school's planners had decided not to allow the use of textbooks or printed materials; instead, all resources were located online through a portal designed by Microsoft. 



Yet educators frequently encountered problems accessing the internet, because the school's wireless connection often would not work. 


"This vital part of the school's technology was never stable and robust enough to make it dependable," said Biros. "There was no safety net, and it seemed like a great leap of faith--faith that these teachers, amidst so many new circumstances, would be able to develop curriculum almost on the fly and store and distribute it electronically." 



Books are good.

Another problem was that the students--most of whom came from poorer families and neighborhoods--could not use or maintain their laptops properly. Students were either afraid to take their laptops home for fear of theft, or they didn't know how to access all the programs on the machines.

Again.

Books are good.

On another front, although Microsoft eventually sent someone to the SOF during its second year to try and foster community relationships, no one realized that school-community partnerships take time, perhaps even years, to mature--leading to uninvested partnerships with no long-term sustainability. 



I say forget the school-community partnerships and have the kids read some books. Also, math is good. You could teach kids math using a math book.

At one point during the discussion, an audience member asked: "All of your resources are online, and educators have to access [them] through this portal. However, your educators don't know how to work the technology. So, exactly what did the teachers teach in class? What were the students learning?" 



"Well, honestly, I'm not exactly sure," replied Biros. 



That's not an answer.

According to Biros, the creation of assessments was problematic. 



"We all agreed that students should be evaluated qualitatively, without customary grades and standardized tests, but we did not consider how colleges would use these assessments to determine students' acceptance into their programs," she explained.

They do what they do.

"It's been three years, only three years," said Hess. "I can't say it's a failure, and I can't say it's a success. Give it another three years, and then we'll be able to say for certain."

School of the Future: Lessons in Failure
by Meris Stansbury
eSchool News

'Cause what is 3 years in the life of a high school student?


But we don't feel like a failure...
Microsoft Lesson Plans

a definition of explicit instruction

Explicit instruction is instruction that does not leave anything to chance, and it does not make assumptions about skills and knowledge that children will acquire “on their own.”

For example, explicit instruction requires teachers to directly make connections between the letters in print and the sounds in words, and it requires that these relationships be taught in a comprehensive fashion. It also requires that the meanings of words be directly taught and be explicitly practiced so that they are accessible when children are reading text. Finally, it requires not only direct practice to build fluency, but also careful, sequential instruction and practice in the use of comprehension strategies to help construct meaning.

Using Common Science and Common Sense to Teach All Children to Read by Holly B. Lane, Ph.D. University of Florida hlane@ufl.edu (pdf file of ppt presentation)

Michael Jackson does long division without a calculator

via Frederick Public Ed

interviewing Mary Hake in 3 hours

Yes, I know, this is ludicrously short notice, but I'm interviewing Mary Hake at 9:30 East Coast time - so if you have questions, let me know.

Here are some Comments at Homeschool Reviews (haven't read yet).

Also, if you have questions about portfolios & Writing Workshop / Reading Workshop, I'll ask those, too. I talked to her a bit about Writing Workshop & she may not have much experience with it - but I'm sure she'll have a lot to say about incremental teaching, aka skills taught in isolation.