Fieldwork Physics 4810 7810 Week 6 Situated How is it going Apologies about fieldnotes WebCT Day 11 Fa2008 Situated Cognition ZPD and Play More this week Projects Fieldwork GO VOTE Register and Vote and vote the whole ballot Clarifying Questions Do you have any questions of interpretation from the papers E g what does ersatz mean What is ZPD How does Vygotsky define Play yes this is the authentic practice we are reading about Largely about CONTEXT What do we mean by context Latin root of the term contexere which means to weave together Cole 1996 p 135 Context Context is the collection of components and the relations among them the connected whole which includes constituent elements and the relations among them Birdwhistell uses the analogy of a rope to develop such a notion of context Context as Rope The fibers that make up the rope are discontinuous when you twist them together you don t make them continuous you make the thread continuous even though it may look in a thread as though each of those particles fibres are going all through it that isn t the case Obviously I am not talking about the environment I am not talking about inside and outside I am talking about the conditions of the system Birdwhistell as quoted in R McDermott 1993 p 274 1 Situating Cognition How can the following make sense 1 is 3 3 is 5 5 is 4 4 is the perfect number What s a magic number How about One is 3 Three is 5 Five is 4 Four is the magic Number Cognitive Apprenticeships Does CA mean making more physicists Is that our goal in the class Cognitive Apprenticeships The authors encourage teachers to engage students in authentic activities and immerse themselves in the culture of the subject they are studying What are students attitudes about such an enculturation Will they want to dive into say the culture of physicists The closest we have to cognitive apprenticeships right now is probably not in the classroom but in internships Teaching using cognitive apprenticeship requires more effort and skill on the part of the teacher than traditional methods of teaching How can we better prepare teachers for this Situating Physics Context I used to hate word problems I spent so much time just trying to interpret Sure a golfer can use physics to predict where his ball will land if he hits it such that it makes a 37 degree angle to the ground but why would s he I enjoy problems where I can use my physics knowledge in situations where one must use physics for example in astronomy In In these situations using physics feels more natural Context What role does context serve Establish prior knowledge Send message that you know this Create situation that is motivating Physics becomes a tool to a natural end Physics as a tool It is quite possible to acquire a tool but to be unable to use it In my opinion this is far more than quite possible this is inevitable 2 Authentic Practice JPFs Is school not an authentic activity Do students not develop expertise at school I think that often the students that excel are the ones that figure out what the teacher is looking for and provide it Really Is this better Orwell was right 1984 3 4 x 2 3 1 2 Collaborative Work We are social creatures and what we do by ourselves is greatly outweighed by what we can do with others This assumption once again seems to come out of the blue How did nobody question this for decades It seems so obvious My experience is that group work is exceedingly rare in the workforce Does anyone s personal experience or other data suggest otherwise T F It is possible to have a complete language that conveys meaning precisely T F He who controls the present controls the past He who controls the past controls the future Collaborative Work Called for by ABET National Academies National Standards Project 2061 Governor s Council Industry 3 Tracking Tracking If you are in favor of tracking do you think that tracking should be changed to be based on students current level of development AND their proximal zone Students should be placed in a class with other students as close as possible to their ability level or development level if you prefer You are doing a disservice to honors students by putting them with students that will slow them down and a disservice to regular students by flying through material to benefit the honors students CU Collaborative Groups What do you think What does the literature say Mehan H Hubbard L Lintz A Villanueva I 1994 Tracking untracking The consequences of placing low track students in high track classes Research Report No 10 Washington DC National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning Impact on different pretest populations high starters 50 pre 93 normalized gain for high pretest 0 9 0 8 0 7 0 6 g 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0 1 0 S04 13 F04 22 S05 14 Semester of of class classininthis this Tut course Course 1 pretest 50 2 pool Trad Recit 3 Impact on different pretest populations low starters pretest 12 5 normalized gain for low pretest 0 6 0 5 g 0 4 0 3 0 2 N 75 0 1 N 45 N 33 N 9 0 S04 23 F04 20 S05 22 Semester of class class in of in this this Tut course Course 1 pretest 12 5 2 pool Trad Recit 3 4 N 75 N 23 N 33 N 9 N 75 N 23 N 33 N 9 N 25 N 10 N 18 N 8 Ave course grade 3 1 1 2 9 2 3 3 1 3 2 3 Play 1 Does letting college students play compromise our academic structure How do we get them to stay on task I guess this applies to younger students too What do we mean by rule based play Zone of Proximal Development Analogous to the difference between a Scalar Vector What is this useful for Understanding cog processes development Designing educaiton 5