[RUME] Burden of Proof #2

[Richard Hake]

Some mathematics educators may be interested in "Re: The Burden of 
Proof #2" [Hake (2009)].  The abstract reads: 

************************************
ABSTRACT: Kevin Carey in his post "The Burden of Proof," quoted 
portions of Paul Basken's (2009) report "Engineering Schools Prove 
Slow to Change" on a Carnegie Foundation study that bemoans "a 
faculty culture resistant to change."  Carey objects to blaming the 
slowness of change in engineering schools on "culture" because, in 
his view, "the more autonomy faculty are given in the classroom, the 
greater the burden of proof to demonstrate that their choices are 
*actually working*, with that proof being based, in significant part, 
on some evidence of what students learn." 

But the problem is that most faculty fail to discharge their burden 
of proof of student learning because they (and administrators) are 
immersed in a culture that relies on course exams and Student 
Evaluations of Teaching (SET's) to gauge student learning - both of 
which typically measure lower-level educational objectives such as 
memory of facts and definitions rather than higher-level outcomes 
such as critical thinking and non-algorithmic problem solving.

How then can faculty measure their students' higher-level learning 
from start to finish of a course? As demonstrated by the physics 
education reform effort, by direct formative evaluation of students' 
*domain-specific* learning through pre/post testing using: (a) valid 
and consistently reliable tests of conceptual understanding *devised 
by disciplinary experts,* and (b) traditional courses as controls.

Such definitive evaluation of the cognitive impact of courses has: 
(a) increased student learning in some U.S. introductory physics 
courses (including large enrollment classes at California Polytechnic 
at San Luis Obispo, Harvard, MIT, North Carolina State, and the 
University of Colorado); (b) is gradually gaining a foothold in 
introductory astronomy, biology, chemistry, economics, engineering, 
geoscience, and math; and (c) has the potential to gradually enhance 
the effectiveness of higher education generally, including that in 
engineering.
************************************

To access the entire 28 kB post  please click on <http://tinyurl.com/d4yy45>.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of  Deventer, The Netherlands.
<rrhake at earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>
<http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com/>

REFERENCES
Hake, R.R. 2009. "Re: The Burden of Proof #2," AERA-L post of 23 Feb 
2009 14:57:57-0800; online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at 
<http://tinyurl.com/d4yy45> and also at 
<http://hakesedstuff.blogspot.com/2009/02/burden-of-proof-2.html>.