Good questions. Mark learned the modeling approach to physics instruction in his LaMSTI physics courses. He also attended a LaMSTI research seminar in which he designed a classroom study to determine the effect of altering his teaching style. He carried out the study for his LaMSTI thesis. His results—-which were significant—-are reported there. (A link to Mark’s thesis is provided in the description of the video.) Similar changes in physics teaching were made by other LaMSTI teachers, and reported in their theses. Too bad the video is only 3 minutes. There is a much bigger story to tell.

LaMSTI is evidence-driven. The only thing we actively advocate is use of evidence in making pedagogical decisions. In the video, Mark refers to evidence from peer-reviewed literature on physics teaching. He also produced evidence in his own classroom in a carefully-designed study, reported in his thesis.

Glad to hear it was convincing. Thanks.

I’ll let Mark know about this. Sounds promising.

I’m not sure I understand what you are asking. Some things that seem to get in the way of pedagogical innovation are: 1) bad curriculum materials (that may even be mandated), 2) uninformed supervision (e.g., mandated instructional methods), 3) pressure from standardized testing. In general, it seems that accountability tends to push teachers into more conservative, more traditional pedagogical styles. (This is a casual observation; it would be interesting to sharpen it into an hypothesis and test it.) Of course, habits are difficult to alter; the teachers who changed had to make a sustained effort, and had to equip themselves with a lot of new classroom routines.

This is indeed what I was getting at. So, I’m wondering if there’s a kind of trigger that motivates an educator to change. The three barriers you’ve listed are certainly daunting but motivated educators seems to pull strength from somewhere else to overcome them. I’ve often found in PD I’ve facilitated, that there is a subset of participants (a “community of the willing,” I’ve called them) who are highly self-motivated and eager to change, and another group that you can barely budge. What are you finding in your work that might be that motivating trigger to really change practice?

We have been doing a research project on the careers of teachers from college to the present, with the hope of understanding the influence of the LaMSTI experience. One thing that stands out is that some teachers seem content to work in the same setting for long periods of time, but others tend to range more widely, exploring many career options. So, we do have good evidence that some teachers are more adventuresome than others. On the other hand, both kinds of teachers seem to be making meaningful changes in their classrooms. My guess is that it is dependent upon the school environment. I think we have evidence that when teachers feel that they have the authority to direct what they are doing, they are happier, more ambitious and more productive.

Hi David,

This is a very timely question. The Common Core Standards say enough about “quantity” versus “number” to put the distinction into focus for curriculum designers. Recently, Wolfram added a data type to Mathematica called “Quantity”. You might look this up to see how Wolfram handles it, since clearly the company has made an effort to be consistent with the conventions that are common in a range of technically sophisticated disciplines. More broadly speaking, the issues here have ancient roots: for example, in Aristotle’s division of the category of quantity into magnitude, number and (certain aspects of) language. There seems to have been a transition in the way we think about quantity in the 17th century in Europe, when we started developing the idea of the real numbers.

There is a lot of scholarly writing on the logic of measurement and quantity. This is a particularly thorny problem in the behavioral sciences, and psychometrician Joel Michel has written some very illuminating pieces about it.

Please email me if you want to go deeper.

Jim,

Yes, I’m very interested in going deeper into a discussion with you about quantities. Thanks for the pointers to Aristotle and J. Michael.
I’m sending via email the JCGM “International vocabulary of
metrology – Basic and general concepts and associated terms” which appears to be very carefully developed and discussed. It was heavily influenced by the psychophysicist, Stevens (Stevens, S. S. (1946). On the Theory of Scales of Measurement. Science, 103(2684), 677-680.),

I am familiar with Wolfram’s approach to quantities, and have played with most of the new functions but not used them in anything serious. Wolfram delayed introducing them until recently (v9?) because they wanted to a consistent a elegant structure, as is their habit.

david

I had the name spelled incorrectly. It’s Joel Michell (University of Sydney). His book “Measurement in Psychology: A Critical History of a Methodological Concept” (2005) is highly critical of Stevens.

Should be an interesting read then.

As a matter of fact, that’s what we’re doing. I’ll put links to the other videos here tomorrow.