Where have I been and what have I been doing? Too much educational reading can get in the way of one's passionate writing about education it would appear.
I have much to say, but I don't have the desire to say it all at the moment. What inspired me to write today is the current buzz about physics education, modeling, and inquiry. I guess I'm upset about the all or nothing approach to educational practices. Is there no value to socratic lecture, or investigation, or guided inquiry? Of course each method of instruction has some merit, and yet people want to overload and employ a single approach to accomplish a complex task. Did you know that if one breathes pure oxygen at depth while scuba diving it is toxic? The answer isn't always 'more of a good thing is the best thing'. Perhaps a new way to look at differentiated instruction is to actually differ instructional methods for everybody regularly. Newton was a genius because he could decipher observed phenomena without the benefit of instruction. I am not so lucky. Are your students as gifted?
This sounds like I am defending lectures, and maybe I am, I don't know. What I do know is that all of my students, without exception (and there have been some potential Newtons amongst them), have at some point needed some help and a direct explanation of the concept with reference to some real life examples of where the concept could be seen and/or is useful, has helped them.
Blech. Edited out some garbage at the end there... Some of you are wondering 'How bad must the drivel he edited out be if this is the stuff that he kept!?'. Touche.
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