Don't
Lecture Me on Lectures!
Kelly R. Roos
A combination of the title of the upcoming Illinois Section of the
AAPT Fall Meeting, Teaching Better Physics Better, and the location
of the meeting has stirred me to revisit a delightful article I read
several years ago by David Griffiths, the recipient of the 1997 Robert
A. Millikan Medal (the location for our Fall meeting is Millikin University,
hmmmm). The article was actually a transcription of his acceptance
speech at the national AAPT meeting, and was published in the American
Journal of Physics (Am. J. Phys. 65 (12),
December 1997).
We are somewhere in the neighborhood of the tenth anniversary of
a reform movement to revitalize physics education. Those of you readers
who are more “in the know” about the exact dates of the
pioneering efforts of the reform movement may take me to task about
the exact number of years since it all started, but at least I think
I remember that it was around ten years ago that “physics education
research” started to become a familiar term. One goal that seems
to me to have permeated the movement over these last ten years is the
debunking of the traditional lecture as a sound mode of physics instruction.
And not just debunking, but there seems to be within the movement the
attitude that our traditional teaching modes are hopelessly flawed
and that not even a good lecturer can effectively lecture, regardless
of any evidence or argument to the contrary. Griffiths does not buy
into this. As you read through Griffiths' article, it becomes immediately
apparent that he is not an advocate of the need to reform physics teaching,
and indeed still rather likes the traditional lecture. He makes a very
convincing, and intellectually sound case for the traditional methods.
My first direct experience with true debunkers occurred while attending
the "Building Undergraduate Physics Programs for the 21st Century Conference" in
1998 in Washington, D.C., a meeting jointly sponsored by the APS and
the AAPT. We had just gathered into our breakout groups to discuss
the role of reforming teaching methods in revitalizing undergraduate
physics programs. With a majority of debunkers present in my particular
group, the overwhelming sentiment was toward a definite need to stop
lecturing, and the few of us in the minority lecture party were continually “lectured” about
the futility of the lecture. Upon suggesting that perhaps the effectiveness
of any method of teaching strongly depends on the passionate dedication
of the teacher we were informed that such an assertion was “demonstrably
wrong!”
Whether the debunkers are right or wrong concerning lecturing, one
thing is certain as we gaze across the physics teaching landscape today:
the debunking hasn't worked, at least in the sense that the larger
physics community has not adopted the anti-lecture stance. There is
still an overwhelmingly large stronghold of traditionalists who cling
to the lecture, despite a great effort by the reformers to “prove” to
us lecturers that lectures are not effective.
So my debunker friends' rather curt statements regarding the “proven” inferiority
of lecturing suggests to me that we who have not adopted “demonstrably” superior
modes of teaching are either ignorant or stubborn. Now, I'm not sure
about my degree of stubbornness (although I'm certain that there are
those who would gladly comment on it), but I am not ignorant. I am
open to new ways of instruction (as we all should be), and indeed,
I have over the last ten years stayed abreast of and experimented with
many of the novel modes of instruction which have come forth as a result
of the reformers. But, I always seem to end up convinced that the new
mode I had been trying was not really better than the traditional methods,
and not worth the extra time and effort I usually expended in implementing
the new fangled ideas. This, of course, is my own opinionated conclusion
based on my own personal physics education experiments. For me the
most important thing to bring to a classroom (perhaps along WITH several
demos and the Force Concepts inventory?!)) is my passion for the subject
matter born out of being deeply involved in scientific pursuits, and
my dedication to the learners. I really do believe that such a combination
CAN be demonstrably effective for teaching physics. Regarding my stubbornness-I
refuse to consider it!
Well, if I have stirred you up by all this, and provoked you all
a bit, then my mission in writing this short column has been accomplished.
I believe these are things which must be continually discussed, and
we should never believe that we and/or our chosen methods of physics
instruction have “arrived” at such a state that we are
beyond critical self examination towards improvement. I invite your
comments, and would love to discuss further these issues with any of
you who are interested. In the mean time, independent of your “mode,” keep
up the good teaching!
Kelly Roos, a professor in the Department of Physics at Bradley
University, is serving as President of the Illinois Section of AAPT.
A slightly shorter version of his editorial appeared in the Fall
issue of the Illinois Physics Teacher.
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