Chapter 3 blog

I enjoy the examples the book gives to illustrate a point because they are in the form of stories (I always love stories more than boring, pedantic lectures). I also have a couple of stories to tell regarding how we as teachers should work on or reconceptualize the students' existing knowledge to make transfer of learning more fluent.

When I was introducing division of fractions, I saw a child with a puzzled look on his face all the time I was teaching it. He gets the math part (the way you get the reciprocal and so on) but he doesn't understand why 1/2 divided by 1/4 is 2. When I asked him why it didn't make sense to him, he said that he was always taught that division meant that your answer always had to be smaller than the number you started with (e.g., 10 divided by 2 is 5). Boy, did we draw a lot of pies that day...

Another story is one coming from my physics class. Newton's first law of motion says that an object will tend to stay in its original state unless acted upon by a force. When asked to explain why a ball rolling across the top of the pool table stops, one student explained that it stops because there is no force causing it to keep on moving --- obviously in direct violation of the first law. We did a lot of reconceptualizing that day!

Chapter 2 blog

The chapter lists 6 different ways of differentiating an expert from a novice. Of the six, I am interested in #5: Experts are not necessarily good teachers.

I can assure you that this is as true as gospel.

I have had decorated college professors who hold multiple advanced degrees in their field but could not teach if their very lives depended on it. Some have the personality of a dial tone; some teach as if the students could read their minds. Others teach as if they have a relationship with the chalkboard and no one else; others teach as though they do not care to have any relationship with anyone at all.

On the other hand, I have also had decorated college professors who hold multiple advanced degrees in their field and teach like it's always their first time. They know how to meet students at a level that is comfortable to them and teach from there. They always have a willing and ready smile so students know that they could be approached for problems and such. They know how to make a lecture seem interesting enough to hold a student's attention.

And so, from the two previous paragraphs above, one can therefore conclude that expertise does not necessarily imply pedagogical skill. As a teacher it is desirable to have both; you cannot teach what you do not know. On the other hand, it is also useless to know and be an expert in something if you are unable to teach it to someone.

To know and to learn how to impart that knowledge --- two things every teacher must have.

Chapter 1 blog b

When I was reading the chapter, I almost felt as if the authors wrote specifically with me in mind. There were a lot of quotes from physics teachers and examples about how physics (what I teach) could be taught conceptually. And that students who learned physics through a conceptual framework had a better grasp of the fundamental principles of physics than the students who were taught physics the traditional way (they also did better on tests).

One has to understand the implications of teaching physics conceptually. It is pretty much like teaching mathematics without numbers. I was taught and learned physics the old way: numbers, numbers, and numbers. So when it came for me to teach it, I was surprised that my colleagues were embracing a new style of teaching physics through emphasis on real-world applications and examples.

Which is why I have to mention the name of the professor who started it all: Paul Hewitt (see pic). Before physics was only open to students of high mathematical ability and so closed the doors to 75% (my ballpark estimate) of the population. He had this insane idea that physics could be taught using analogies, imagery, and using plain old simple language. And the floodgates were opened, so to speak. Today, teaching conceptual physics is more the norm than the exception in the middle/high school level. Students understand the concept and so the math part becomes easiER for them to understand. They do not just memorize some random formula but grasp what each part of the formula signifies.

Thank you Mr. Hewitt!

Chapter 1 blog a

What struck me most about Chapter One was a quote by Nobel laureate Herbert Simon (see pic) when he said that the meaning of "knowing" has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it (1996). And then I racked my brains trying to remember a teacher of mine saying the same thing to me in 1994. It was Dr. Kallingal in one of his psychology classes! Do you know what that means? Dr. Kallingal could have won the Nobel prize instead!

All kidding aside, I was curious about this who this Herbert Simon person was so I googled his name and found this link about who he was. It turns out that he is a computer expert and the father of artificial intelligence. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 and seemed to be an expert on anything and everything: computers, physics, cognitive psychology to name a few. How did such a person "learn"?

His childhood was immersed in education; he surrounded himself with books, played music, and loved the outdoors. He loved discussion and debate over dinner with his family. So how was he so academically successful when others have failed?

The chapter says that academically gifted students like Dr. Simon may have had an advantage over the run-of-the-mill students because "formal educational environments have been better at selecting talent than developing it". If only ordinary students could have been given better opportunities to bloom we would have more Nobel laureates in the world. Sadly, this is not the case. Therefore we as teachers should design our classroom environment so that it embraces even the unembraceable child.

I guess this is what we will learn to do in the next few weeks...

Hello World!

OK, this is supposedly the place where I post reading assignments. Good luck to me!