There are some key points from the video I want reiterate.
When teaching and learning, physics problems are little more than a list of details necessary to complete the assigned task or question. We word physics problems with too many synonyms making them unnecessarily cryptic and ambiguous. Physics teachers, and others, use another more practiced skill: sifting through peripheral words and descriptions for the parts that matter – and that is no easy skill to learn.
There is a time in the stage of learning to assign challenging problems; however, based on our desire to assign difficult, profound, and overly complex problems we do it too early, or maybe too eagerly? We take glee in puzzling our students but in so doing lose sight of the lost learning opportunities for success.
I am not opposed to assigning challenging problems, only that the goal in assigning them should be more transcendent than the solution to the problem. You’ll see how I approach them in the final chapter No problem is unprecedented.
What is the fix? We need to provide our students with a greater number of smaller perfunctory problems for them to learn the standard words, units, variables, descriptions of scenarios, and (!) to practice their mathematics (all this combines to develop competence).
The comprehension starts when a student becomes comfortable with the new ways a scenario is detailed in a physics problem.
I am now finished with the videos for Chapter 1 Competence before comprehension. I anticipate a few more written posts to:
close the loop on creating and using the equation inventory,
describe the challenges to my approach (so far), and
present a final template using the remaining equation P=VI, along with a printable document.
And a final post, possibly as a video, to segue into Chapter 2 Answers matter, but they don’t make a difference.
Cheers,
John
You can find me on LinkedIn.
