[RUME] RUME: Miracles in Education

[Richard Hake]

In her Dewey-L post of 18 Feb 2006 titled "Dewey Joke," Celinda Scott 
(2006) related a joke she had found on the "John Dewey Project in 
Progressive Education" site <http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/> of the 
College of Education and Social Services of the Univ. of Vermont 
[bracketed by lines "SSSSSSS. . . ."]:

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Imagine a modern educational reformer at a séance successfully 
calling up John Dewey.

Reformer:  "Professor Dewey, we have labored for 15 years to improve 
America's schools without success.  Please tell me how we can create 
the kinds of schools our children need and deserve?" 

Dewey:  "Well, there's the natural way and the miraculous way. Which 
do you want?"

Reformer (his idealism faltering):  "The natural way."

Dewey:  The natural way would be for God to send down bands of angels 
to visit every single public school and transform them into places of 
true learning."

Reformer:  "Good heavens! (gasp) What then is the miraculous way?"

Dewey: "Ah, the miraculous way would be for the people to do it themselves."
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

And speaking of do-it-yourself miracles, in "The Physics Education 
Reform Effort: A Possible Model for Higher Education" [Hake (2005)], 
I wrote [bracketed by lines "HHHHHHH. . . .":

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I see no reason that student learning gains far larger than those in 
traditional courses could not eventually be achieved and documented 
[as has been done in physics - see e.g., Wieman & Perkins (2005)] if 
other disciplines from arts through philosophy to zoology IF [here a 
MIRACLE would be required] their faculty practitioners would:

(a) reach a consensus on the *crucial* concepts that all beginning 
students should be brought to understand;

(b) undertake the lengthy qualitative and quantitative research 
required to develop multiple-choice tests (MCT's) of higher-level 
learning of those concepts [see e.g., Halloun & Hestenes (1985a,b)];

(c) develop Interactive Engagement methods suitable to their disciplines.

Why MCT's? So that the tests can be given to thousands of students in 
hundreds of courses under varying conditions in such a manner that 
meta-analyses can be performed, thus establishing general causal 
relationships in a convincing manner.

But can multiple-choice tests measure *higher-order* learning? Wilson 
& Bertenthal (2005) think so, writing (p. 94): "Performance 
assessment is an approach that offers great potential for assessing 
complex thinking and learning abilities, but multiple choice items 
also have their strengths. For
example, although many people recognize that multiple-choice items 
are an efficient and effective way of determining how well students 
have acquired basic content knowledge, many do not recognize that 
they can also be used to measure complex cognitive processes. For 
example, the "Force Concept Inventory" . . . [Hestenes et al. 1992] . 
. . is an assessment that uses multiple choice items to tap into 
higher-level cognitive processes."
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake at earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>


REFERENCES
Hake, R. R. 2005. "The Physics Education Reform Effort: A Possible 
Model for Higher Education," online as ref. 37 at 
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake> or download directly by 
clicking on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/NTLF42.pdf> (100 kB). This is a
slightly edited version of an article that was (a) published in the 
National Teaching and Learning Forum 15(1), December 2005, online to 
subscribers at
<http://www.ntlf.com>, and (b) disseminated by the Tomorrow's Professor list
<http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings.html> as Msg. 698 on 14 Feb 
2006. See also Hake (2006).

Hake, R.R. 2006. "Measuring Teaching and Learning Performance: 
Interconnected Issues," in "Proceedings of the Third International 
Conference on Measurement and Evaluation in Education (ICMEE 2006)," 
Penang, Malaysia, 13-15 February. This paper is also online with 
hot-linked URL's as ref. 38 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake> or download directly by clicking on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/ICMEEk-2006.pdf> (230 kB).

Halloun, I. & D. Hestenes. 1985a. "The initial knowledge state of 
college physics students." Am. J. Phys. 53:1043-1055; online at
<http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>. Contains the "Mechanics 
Diagnostic" test, precursor to the "Force Concept Inventory."

Halloun, I. & D. Hestenes. 1985b. "Common sense concepts about motion." Am.
J. Phys. 53:1056-1065; online at <http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>.

Hestenes, D., M. Wells, & G. Swackhamer, 1992. "Force Concept 
Inventory," Phys. Teach. 30: 141-158; online (except for the test 
itself) at
<http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>. The 1995 revision by 
Halloun, Hake, Mosca, & Hestenes is online (password protected) at 
the same URL, and is available in English, Spanish, German, 
Malaysian, Chinese, Finnish, French, Turkish, Swedish, and Russian.

Scott, C. 2006. "Dewey Joke," Dewey-L post of 18 Feb 2006 
11:29:44-0500; online at <http://tinyurl.com/nyjwl>.

Wieman, C. & K. Perkins. 2005. "Transforming Physics Education," 
Physics Today 58(11): 36-41; soon to be online at 
<http://www.colorado.edu/physics/EducationIssues/> / "Papers" (where 
"/" means "click on").

Wilson, M.R. & M.W. Bertenthal, eds. 2005. "Systems for State Science 
Assessment," Nat. Acad. Press; online at
<http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11312>.