Some Astro 100 goals Astro 101 Rethinking the goals maintain a large enrollment have high student satisfaction not take too much faculty or staff time engender support for funding of Astronomy research Edward F Redish Department of Physics University of Maryland May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley Learning goals Structural goals 1 May 11 2001 learn astronomy facts understand the nature of scientific inquiry develop a sense of scale and place in space and time develop a habit of reading astronomy articles in the press and popular books Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 2 What has been learned Extracting the core Developing effective instruction depends on our understanding A Model of Learning and Knowing what students know when they come in students learning styles and expectations Both our goals and our approaches for instruction are strongly dependent on the populations involved our model of learning and knowing the available instructional methods May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 3 May 11 2001 The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking It is for this reason that the critical thinking of the physicist cannot possibly be restricted to the examination of concepts from his own specific field He cannot proceed without considering critically a much more difficult problem the problem of analyzing the nature of everyday thinking Albert Einstein Physics and Reality J of the Franklin Institute 221 1936 Triangulate on ideas and principles of learning developed in education research cognitive psychology neuroscience and ethology Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 4 Key results from cognitive education research A Theoretical Frame May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 5 1 Learning is productive constructive 2 Knowledge is associative linked 3 The cognitive response is context dependent 4 Most people require some social interactions in order to learn effectively May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 6 1 1 Learning is productive constructive Physical reasoning maps primitive elements onto specific situations The brain tries to make sense of new input in terms of existing mental structures Primitives Irreducible functional pieces based on direct interpretation of experience We learn by analogy metaphor New constructions tend to be based on the model of existing structures The ideas and metaphors students bring into class are what they will use to learn with Facets Inferred physical principles for specific situations Understanding these learning resources can help us design more effective learning activities Context Both internal and external diSessa and Minstrell May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 7 May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 8 2 Knowledge is associative linked Example One of the best established principles of cognitive science is the associative character of thinking We have large amounts of information stored in our long term memory Primitive Closer is stronger Facet You can get warmer by standing closer to the fire Most of it is not immediately accessible and needs to be activated by chains of association What matters is not just what our students know but how it s connected May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 9 May 11 2001 This picture is an oversimplification Nodes have structure in multiple dimensions There are metanodes that control what links appear when A guiding executive with 10 3 The cognitive response is context dependent Organization of Long Term Memory Schemas Links represent probabilities of association These change depending on context Astronomy Chairs Berkeley The productive response depends on the context in which new input is presented including the student s mental state expectations Students can use multiple models Confusion about appropriate context can make it appear as if students hold contradictory ideas at the same time nodes and structure of its own epistemology control affect etc May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 12 2 Resources Links and Context The context dependence of schema generation implies that how a situation is presented may affect how an individual responds in particular what resources they have access to Resource a cognitive knowledge element including data facts reasoning methods metaphors analogies etc May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley A set of four 3x5 cards is dealt on a table as shown above Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other The dealer proposes that these 4 cards satisfy the rule If there is a vowel on one side of the card then there is an odd number on the other What is the smallest number of cards you have to turn over to be sure the rule is satisfied Which ones 13 A small problem What is 3 divided by 3 12 You are acting as bouncer at the local pub It is your job to check ID s for the servers One server has placed four 3x5 cards on the bar describing the customers at a table in the back On one side of the card is his best guess of the patron s age on the other what they are drinking Should you go to the back to check some ID s Whose 1 4 An example from astronomy 4 7 1 2 A group of students have 3 small pizzas each divided into pizza parts How many students can have a piece Each pie can serve 4 students so the 3 pies can serve 12 The remaining can serve 2 so a total of 14 can be served Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 16 Goal analysis If we we want to teach this we could have many distinct goals depending on what cognitive structures we want to help our students build The study summarized in the film A Private Universe demonstrated that both high school students and graduating Harvard seniors had confusions about why it was warmer in summer than in winter Many thought that the sun was closer to the earth in summer than in winter Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 2 1 4 4 4 7 42 1 7 2 14 May 11 2001 May 11 2001 7 learn an isolated fact construct a model that coherently explains a number of distinct facts construct a model that relates a mental model to students personal and direct experience construct a model that exemplifies the process of model building in science combining multiple observations and seeking consistency 17 May 11 2001 Astronomy Chairs Berkeley 18 3 Possible goals Resource analysis We could teach the isolated fact the tilt of the earth s axis is responsible for the change of seasons We could teach that science is about the construction of models that coherently and consistently explain many facts such as the fact that when it is summer in the northern hemisphere it is winter