[IAEP] How can we help kids get into the habits of looking for all possible causes and counter examples to problems?

[forster at ozonline.com.au]

Maria wrote:
> Looking back at my life, I have never had to do anything with REASONS for
> seasons or phases of the moon, outside of curriculum design. Have you?

No, I doubt that > 0.001% of us have any reason to understand these things.

The reason to teach about these things is that in practicing developing and testing hypotheses, it builds up our skills to understand other systems. So this kind of material should not be rote learned, it should be investigated. 

As Maria suggests, it might be even better practicing hypothesis testing on systems more relevant to us. The seasons probably made more sense a century ago as a system on which to practice understanding. We were much more affected by the seasons then and lived in a far simpler world. Today, maybe we should practice understanding on the internet or television or whether the moon landing was an elaborate hoax on a sound stage.

The challenge for teachers is to share our love of understanding things, not so much a love of learning but a love of understanding. The joy of building robust hypotheses of how things work.

PS
Another challenge: why is it colder in the mountains?

Tony


> On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 5:11 AM, Steve Thomas <sthomas1 at gosargon.com> wrote:
> 
> > Early in the Alan's talk<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-124161889929978086>(~34:30, sound terrible, content good) Alan talks about a survey done at the
> > Harvard commencement ceremonies where students, teachers and faculty were
> > asked:
> >
> >    1. Why are there seasons?
> >    2. What causes the phases of the moon?
> >
> > Most got it wrong (usually along the lines of "the seasons are caused by
> > the distance from the earth to the Sun").
> > Alan tried this at UCLA and got the same results (about 95% got had severe
> > misconceptions about one or both of them).
> > He then asked the follow up to question #1; When its Summer in the Northern
> > hemisphere, what season is it in the Southern Hemisphere?  They all got that
> > right, then after about 20 seconds the contradiction hit them
> >
> > Then he asks, why is it, that they didn't come up with
> > this contradiction when they were asked the first question?
> >
> > So what can we do about this, and how can we help kids look for all
> > possible causes and find counter examples?
> >
> 
> Maybe we should stage less idle talk, and invite kids to spend longer,
> in-depth time doing something. As the example above illustrates, if you
> spend even a few minutes with a problem, a lot of misconceptions go away. In
> my experience, when people need to DO something using a piece of knowledge,
> their understanding becomes robust.
> 
> Looking back at my life, I have never had to do anything with REASONS for
> seasons or phases of the moon, outside of curriculum design. Have you?
> 
> Cheers,
> Maria Droujkova
> 919-388-1721
> 
> Make math your own, to make your own math
> <br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 5:11 AM, Steve Thomas <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sthomas1 at gosargon.com" target="_blank">sthomas1 at gosargon.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
> 
> 
> <div class="gmail_quote"><div>Early in the <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-124161889929978086" target="_blank">Alan's talk</a> (~34:30, sound terrible, content good) Alan talks about a survey done at the Harvard commencement ceremonies where students, teachers and faculty were asked:</div>
> 
> 
> <div>
> <div><ol><li>Why are there seasons?</li><li>What causes the phases of the moon?</li></ol><div>Most got it wrong (usually along the lines of "the seasons are caused by the distance from the earth to the Sun").</div>
> 
> 
> 
> <div>Alan tried this at UCLA and got the same results (about 95% got had severe misconceptions about one or both of them).�</div><div>He then asked the follow up to question #1; When its Summer in the Northern hemisphere, what season is it in the Southern Hemisphere? �They all got that right, then after about 20 seconds the contradiction hit them�</div>
> 
> 
> 
> <div><br></div><div>Then he asks, why is it, that they didn't come up with this�contradiction�when they were asked the first question?</div></div><div><br></div><div>So what can we do about this, and how can we help kids look for all possible causes and find counter examples?</div>
> 
> 
> </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Maybe we should stage less idle talk, and invite kids to spend longer, in-depth time doing something. As the example above illustrates, if you spend even a few minutes with a problem, a lot of misconceptions go away. In my experience, when people need to DO something using a piece of knowledge, their understanding becomes robust.�</div>
> 
> 
> <div><br></div><div>Looking back at my life, I have never had to do anything with REASONS for seasons or phases of the moon, outside of curriculum design. Have you?</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,<br>Maria Droujkova<br>
> 
> <a href="tel:919-388-1721" value="+19193881721" target="_blank">919-388-1721</a><br>
> <br>Make math your own, to make your own math<br></div></div>
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