I’m just picking out a few small issues to talk about in reaction to the readings — the Blumenfeld et. al. piece, for example, had enough to write a lot more about, but I wouldn’t be able to do it any justice at this point…
1. Teacher control vs. student control of the class
The biggest question that came up for me in these readings was around teacher control of the class versus student control of the class. In Greeno, I saw it around the discussion of “conceptual agency” (page 88):
Conceptual agency is involved when an individual or group interacts with the subject-matter constructively — interpreting meanings, formulating questions, choosing and adapting a method, designing an apparatus, and so on… School activities often position students with little conceptual agency, teaching them instead how to perform algorithms correctly (disciplinary agency) or to set up apparatus to obtain known experimental results (material agency).
Reading this, I realized that I place a high value on the amount of conceptual agency I’d offer in a class — I want students to get involved in the process of designing their own experiments, thinking up their own explanations for what they see, and critiquing each others’ work. But I get conflicted about this, for at least two reasons:
- It seems like it places a lot of control in students’ hands, and that makes me a little nervous (because I like to be able to predict what’s going to happen in the day).
- I’m not sure how honest it is. To what degree can I really put the class in students’ hands when I am the one grading them and when I’m the one who is judged on including the state/federal/local standards in the classroom?
The Blumenfeld et. al piece also talks over this issue, but it mostly shows up in discussions around technology use. I’ll talk about technology specifically below, but I just recognized that the examples provided where the process was very “canned”, or where the teacher had a very clear idea of exactly how the class would proceed before it even started, seemed less engaging to me. I’m recognizing that there’s a specific way of thinking about science that I value and want to communicate which conceptual agency speaks to, and these approaches do not.
2. Coherence
I’ve been thinking of evaluating theories based on splits: individual vs. group, holistic vs. reductionist, abstract/general vs. concrete/specific. diSessa brings up a new way to evaluate theories: coherent vs. fragmented, and applies that split within the cognitive camp to contrast her views with the prevailing views within the cognitive camp: to paraphrase, she sees us as holding many ideas that can all be in conflict with each other, and suggests that effective teaching could involve building up the ideas that line up with the concept that we’re trying to teach, rather than trying to get students to reject an existing concept that is out of line with the new one. In the discussion on misconceptions around force when looking at a ball thrown upward that rises and then falls, she notes (p 266): “Finally, the upward “force” in the incorrect explanation is not absent, but it is what physicists call momentum.”
While I found the analysis around the work done on misconceptions useful, I didn’t find the idea of “coherence” as useful in thinking about other theories as it was in splitting these two versions of cognitive theory up. As a result, it seemed like a bit less central question than some of the others seem to be.
3. Technology
All of the examples discussed in the Blumenfeld et al piece involved extensive use of technology, and I got a clear sense of technology being seen as good all by itself. In Table 1 on page 837, under the “Tools” column, we see “Pencil, paper” and “Low bandwidth telecom” under the “Then” column, while the “Now” column shows “interactive, integrated computer-based” and “High-bandwidth telecom”. This bugs me, and I’m trying to decide if I’m just in a “get off my lawn” space, or if I have a reasonable beef. So I’ll provide two examples of why I think tech for tech’s sake is a bad idea.
- The “Scientists in Action” program outlined on page 846 seems really limited — students analyze a series of scenes from a videodisc and go through a canned set of questions and interactions to work on their scientific reasoning and problem-solving. It seemed like it would be extremely rigid to use, and goes against the whole “cognitive agency” thing I was talking about above.
- The “Project-Based Science” program outlined on page 848 has students from different locations work together on teams using telecommunication, videoconferencing, and online access to data across locations. Having worked on a project requiring this type of interaction in my prior job, I have to say that it’s tremendously hard to do well, and that the benefit would have to be extremely big to justify the effort (for me). It’s hard for me not to see it as a way to add extra technology to make the project look more interesting.
I don’t feel anti-technology, but I feel like technology often gets thrown around as a solution instead of a tool. I’m extremely opposed to this type of view, because I feel like it sets the technology up for a pretty bad failure.
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First, let me say that I am shocked and saddened by that lack of the word “folks” in this blog. Besides that, I think being concerned about letting the students control the class is perfectly valid. Just keep in mind that everything will be engineered by you to start with. For the most part I think you can let students feel that they are discovering science on their own without having to either (a) hover over them or (b) let them run free. Activities that are student lead are really just set up by you so that they discover certain things they way you want them to. I’m not saying it’s easy, I’m just saying it isn’t completely in their hands.
In regards to your concern about control of the classroom, I would sort of nervous to give students overwhelming control of the classroom. I know that isn’t really the focus of the discussion and it’s pretty much hyperbole, but I hope you get what I’m saying. My main concern is putting the students in a position where they have their freedoms, but either take them too far or just flat out don’t know what to do with the freedom.
I agree with you about technology. I found it kinda funny that all of the examples in Blumenfeld used technology is some way. Then I remembered that the paper was written in the 90’s when having your own home computer was starting to become more accessible. So I’m guessing all the researchers were like, “OOO…we can use computers to help them learn…oooo.” Well, maybe. But you make a good point. Computers are not the solution, they are something to aid you in learning.