Section 4.6 Why to teach: Modifying the philosophy underlying one's efforts.
¶“What does it mean to teach?” is a question that both faculty and students may ponder as instructors shift from presenting information through well-formed lectures to facilitating student learning through effective interactive strategies. A related issue is enlarging the nature of the goal: what does it mean to go beyond conveying knowledge of particular physics concepts to helping students learn multiple ways of ‘thinking like physicists’? A focus on “what are the students learning?” led to plans to collect data in class and to contribute to physics education research through publications such as “Why is Ampere's Law so Hard? A Look at Middle-Level Physics” (Manogue, Browne, Dray, & Edwards, 2006) in the American Journal of Physics. Here the authors summarized aspects of student thinking that need explicit attention:
Students need all of the following capabilities to solve our Ampere's Law problem: the ability to (1) recognize and use symmetry arguments, (2) represent physical quantities symbolically and keep track of their properties, (3) move smoothly between various representations, (4) make geometrical arguments such as interpreting integrals as sums, and (5) recognize and solve subtle inverse problems...Although all of these are essential, it is rare to see them as explicit goals in these transitional courses...(p.349).
An important aspect of the success of this educational reform project was the emphasis the faculty placed on documenting, interpreting, and addressing such implicit aspects of student learning.