Work-related thoughts

I had a great conversation with my host at the 11am department tea this morning. It is commonly viewed in my field that in order for students to learn, they must explicitly confront the way they are thinking about the world. For example, they should be asked to make a prediction about what will happen, then when something contradictory happens, they should reflect on how to modify their model for the way the world works. However, students often have this huge disconnect between physics and "the real world" - they think that what we do in class is just some hoops to clear in order to pass a test, and is not related to actual observations. It seems Eugenia's methods of teaching scientific abilities is a much better way to go. Here we teach students to make careful observations, to think about the assumptions they are making when using a model for that behavior, and to analyze the effects of those assumptions. This way students aren't first producing some bad idea which is strengthened by the firing of neurons in the brain - but instead are approaching the situation from a higher-order level of thinking. This method should arrive at the same result, having students think consistently about behavior, and more importantly, they should have a better understanding of the models they are using. This would probably also help them connect physics to the real world - or at least not be a barrier to that. I'm sure Eugenia knows this already - but it was none the less a great conversation for me and provides great food for thought.