On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 5:11 AM, Steve Thomas <[email protected]> wrote:
> Early in the Alan's > talk<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-124161889929978086>(~34:30, > sound terrible, content good) Alan talks about a survey done at the > Harvard commencement ceremonies where students, teachers and faculty were > asked: > > 1. Why are there seasons? > 2. What causes the phases of the moon? > > Most got it wrong (usually along the lines of "the seasons are caused by > the distance from the earth to the Sun"). > Alan tried this at UCLA and got the same results (about 95% got had severe > misconceptions about one or both of them). > He then asked the follow up to question #1; When its Summer in the Northern > hemisphere, what season is it in the Southern Hemisphere? They all got that > right, then after about 20 seconds the contradiction hit them > > Then he asks, why is it, that they didn't come up with > this contradiction when they were asked the first question? > > So what can we do about this, and how can we help kids look for all > possible causes and find counter examples? > Maybe we should stage less idle talk, and invite kids to spend longer, in-depth time doing something. As the example above illustrates, if you spend even a few minutes with a problem, a lot of misconceptions go away. In my experience, when people need to DO something using a piece of knowledge, their understanding becomes robust. Looking back at my life, I have never had to do anything with REASONS for seasons or phases of the moon, outside of curriculum design. Have you? Cheers, Maria Droujkova 919-388-1721 Make math your own, to make your own math
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