Eva:
Actually, no, I do not go into class with a prepared lecture. Exactly what
happens depends on the students. I try to set up what can be called
disequilibration in lab each week. This 'drives' the discussion.
Lab occurs between the Wed and the Fri meetings of the full class. Lab is
not cookbook, nor verification of anything. Instead it is the 'first'
experience with the phenomena in the context of the course. Students are
asked to spend time predicting and explaining the sense their predictions
make with their classmates in groups of 4 or so. The events of which they
are asked to predict the outcome are ones which generally we find their
predictions are not what happens in ways the _students_ find significant.
Closure is the _opposite_ of what is intended in these lab experiences.
When the students come into the large class setting, I try to engage them
in a sort of 'townhall meeting' over the issues which have come up.
Ideally, I try to serve as moderator and facilitator (and subversive
instigator), not discussant or authority in these sessions. The
discussions often have a trajectory which is sometimes predictable after a
few experiences with them, but major departures occur frequently enough
that one cannot rely on a stock set of questions and responses. My biggest
problem is dealing with student conceptions of the roles of teacher and
student which many students come with to class and which are profoundly at
odds with the roles I am trying to engage in the course.
Not only do the issues which come up unresolved in lab drive the discussion
on the first class meeting after (Fri) but frequently, they are only barely
'settled,' if that, by the next Wed in the discussions.
Every semester is different due to the differences in 'social chemistry'
within the cohort of students. To 'can Dewey' would be to remove the
responsiveness to this 'chemistry' and the instigation factor. I have to
be able to respond to and use the context generated by the students to
instigate issues with which the students wrestle.
The class my course follows in the room I use is Anatomy & Physiology.
Students in this course seem to need water-cooled pens to take notes and
there are several dozen tape recorders placed around the podium up front
being retrieved after class when I come in. (Most semesters the
_instructor_ has his own tape recorder running for self defense!) No tape
recorders are placed up front during the classes in my course.
Dewey
PS: on the canning issue... We have a Representative to the US Congress
named Helen Chenowith. During her campaign she held up a can of salmon and
suggested that salmon were not an endangered species because you can buy
cans of it in the grocery store, ignoring the fact that several salmon runs
in Idaho have ended in the last few years. Now there are bumper stickers
which read: Can Helen, Not Salmon.
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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/SN318 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad who-is-at varney.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper
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