Re: [Phys-L] Who is driving on-line ed?

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Really!!! I think this is only applicable to certain domains, and even then
it may not happen.  Physicists are just as suseptible to being fooled,
bamboozled, and letting their paradigms rule their thought.  That is why
investigation of paranormal claims needs both a good scientist and a
magician.  Together they can explain the tricks.  Once you know that your
memory is very fallible, and you begin to realize that paradigms or frames
rule you, then perhaps you can accommodate new concepts.  But this means you
can never be absolutely sure you do know how to learn.

Notice that internalization comes in 2 kinds, accomodation, and
assimilation.  When you see something that you already understand, but has
only a slight challenge at most, you assimilate it and fit it into the
existing paradigm.  But when you see something which violates something you
might have a strong opinion or paradigm, the natural reaction is to fight it
rather than accommodate.  This happens often outside of your field, and
often accomodation does not happen.  This happened with MDs who fought
antiseptics.

Students have the same difficulty, so IE is the necessary remedy.  It is not
that they don't know how to learn.  It is that the necessary accomodation
violates their life long experiences and what they have been told by many
others.  Learning physics is almost an act of brain washing for most of the
students.  True there are some that take to it like a swan to water.  Also,
they have been taught to just memorize rather than try to accommodate.  Look
in the mirror.  The problem is US.  The teachers just teach the way they
were taught, by rote.  This is something I learned in education school that
teachers tend to teach the way they were taught.  I picked up on the clues,
but most of the other prospective teachers probably did not.  Virtually none
of the courses on how to teach really got into IE, and inquiry was just a
few pages in a book about the history of teaching.  I suspect that things
have changed little since them.  Students do know how to learn when it is
only assimilation, but ... Accomodation?

John M. Clement
Houston, TX  

> The thing is, YOU know how to learn. You know how to listen 
> and watch and how to internalize this kind of material.