From 1993, McDermott expands on Hestenes work from 15 years earlier and tells that teachers are doing it wrong. Traditional lecture teaching is not helping students learn physics.
(McDermott)
I have read some of McDermott's books "Physics by Inquiry" and agree with her thoughts and doubts about traditional teaching. About eight years ago, I took some grad level science education classes at WSU and they pushed the whole inquiry thing hard. That was about the time when the HSCE had just come out and that was being pushed hard from my district. I really didn't buy into the inquiry/conceptual change/constructivistic teaching so hitting 130 some standards in 180 days continued to be tradition but since reading a lot of the same Physics Education Research people has me wondering and changing.
I always found it interesting that we have so many content objectives but then they throw in the constructing and reflecting objectives that we should sprinkle in. The old me used to say hey I do a good job of teaching content. The constructing and reflecting will take care of itself in the process. Now I realize that I had it all backwards. I now focus on the constructing and reflecting and use the content as the materials to do science. A small shift maybe, but I think it makes all the difference.
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