The Science/Math Education Shift from Teaching to Learning

Some blog followers might be interested in a discussion-list post “The Science/Math Education Shift from Teaching to Learning” [Hake (2011)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: This post is a slight expansion and improvement of an earlier post “Anatomy Education.” The revision was stimulated by the interesting 11-post POD thread “Re: Open inquiry is bad? (in some intro tech courses)” at http://bit.ly/miR63T, especially Anton Tolman’s (2011) emphasis on John Tagg’s (2003) important book The Learning Paradigm College.

Robin Hopkins in a POD post “SHIFT IN THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE” wrote: “I'm interested in the shift that is required of traditional anatomists as the medical school moves toward a curriculum that requires anatomy to be taught/learned in ways that are more aligned with the clinical application of anatomy than simply ‘knowing’ anatomy (usually for tests).”

If the tests are of the usual classroom type then they require only the regurgitation of memorized material rather than higher-order learning such as the understanding of scientific concepts. I suspect that that higher-order learning is required for the effective clinical application of anatomy just as it is for the successful pursuit of science/math professions generally.

In my opinion, THE MAJOR SHIFT IN SCIENCE/MATH EDUCATION IS THE SHIFT “FROM TEACHING TO LEARNING: A NEW PARADIGM FOR UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION” [Barr & Tagg (1995), Tagg (2003)].

But unknown to most of academia, education researchers have developed “Concept Inventories” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_inventory that can be used in formative pre/post testing to gauge the impact of courses on students' learning and understanding of scientific concepts. At least in physics such testing demonstrates that “Interactive Engagement” (IE) courses result in course-averaged normalized learning gains g(ave) that are about two-standard deviations above those of “Traditional” (T) passive-student lecture courses [Hake (1998a,b; 2008)].

I give 31 hot-linked references to some of the relevant literature.
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To access the complete 24 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/ijJeCm.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi
http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com
http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“…I point to the following unwelcome truth: much as we might dislike the implications, research is showing that didactic exposition of abstract ideas and lines of reasoning (however engaging and lucid we might try to make them) to passive listeners yields pathetically thin results in learning and understanding - except in the very small percentage of students who are specially gifted in the field.”
Arnold Arons in Teaching Introductory Physics (p. vii, 1997)


REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 22 June 2011.]

Arons, A.B. 1997. Teaching Introductory Physics. Wiley. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/bBPfop. Note the searchable “Look Inside” feature.

Hake, R.R. 2011. “The Science/Math Education Shift from Teaching to Learning” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/ijJeCm. Post of 22 Jun 2011 08:13:15-0700 to AERA-L and NetGold. The abstract and link to the complete 24 kB post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.