AYPD third session

Stamatis started class last night by framing our video-watching in terms of the formative assessment cycle (Collect data - Interpret - Plan action - Implement), emphasizing that what we're doing in these sessions is in the "interpret" category, and that we want to rein in our impulse to jump straight to "planning action."  We (the teachers and instructors) revisited the guidelines we wanted to impose on ourselves as we watched video together:  here's what they said:

This is all well and good, but I felt (and continue to feel...) that we are going to slip up, and we need to plan how we're going to call ourselves on that, because it's not easy.  In advance, I came up with two ideas:

• A couple people should be designated to pay special attention to whether we're following our guidelines.  Maybe we could call them "refs."  There should be one or two "refs" for whole-class discussions, and maybe a "table ref" for each small group as well.  The refs should not be the instructors.
• Because I sometimes find it hard to verbalize an objection in circumstances like this, I thought it might help if there could be a nonverbal signal, like a bell or a popper.  I wound up making these very dorky little flags from some cheap dowels, polyester knit fabric, and binder clips:

I need a haircut.  But I think the flags are way fun.  In class, I gave every table one or two flags and explained what they were for, but I forgot about designating refs.

The video we watched was what I think of as the "nail video," in which two PET students create a white board showing their initial model of a magnetized nail.  Out of respect to Valerie I'm not going to post the video here, but you can read about my analysis of that video on sciencegeekgirl, who liveblogged my AAPT presentation.  Needless to say it's a video that I have thought about a lot.  Nonetheless, the teachers gave me new insight.  In talking about what metaphors the participants seemed to be using for energy, I had already thought about a "container metaphor" (energy is in objects, like water is in a cup) and an "activation metaphor" (in which energy "turns on" an object).  The teachers raised two other ideas that were relatively new to me:

(1) An idea I almost want to call "actualization" or "fulfillment," where energy helps an object become what it is particularly meant to be: magnetizable things become magnets, stretchy things get stretched, lights turn on, movable things get moving. This might be a specialized kind of activation, in which an object is energized into fulfilling its particular destiny. The Creation of Adam picture, which I have used to illustrate "activation," might just as well be illustrating "fulfillment," since presumably what happens to Adam is special to Adam. I didn't have the Sistine Chapel image handy, so I drew it on the board... how'd I do?

(Stamatis said, "Oh, Rachel, the Vatican is calling," and I said, "What, they need their ceiling painted?" and it was seeming like a good time, but one of the teachers was turned off by the religious imagery.  oh well.)

(2) An idea we referred to as the "Tea Flavor" metaphor, in which the energy is infused into an object the way tea flavor is infused into water, or peach flavor infused into vodka. This is different from the metaphor in which the energy is like water and the object is like a cup, because it captures the sense that energy can permeate solid objects and changes their quality without adding mass or volume. One teacher observed that this is very much how we think of charge, which the students in the video had previously mentioned as being related to their model for magnetism. Ooo! However, we noted that the students in the video very much like the word stored for describing the energy, and that you do not store tea flavor by making tea, whereas you do store water by putting it in a cup.

I enjoyed the conversation a lot and I made sure to tell them loudly that they had given me new insight, never mind that I had watched this episode probably 100 times, analyzed it, presented it at a national meeting, etc.

Meanwhile, the conversation management.  Most of the conversation was appropriate and followed our guidelines.  However I am sorry to say that even after all our negotiating and clarifying and flag distributing, there were a number of problems:

1. The first thing anyone said about the video in the whole-class discussion was something like, "They're doing a misguided analysis that isn't going to get them anywhere."  Judgment, insult, speculation, not grounded in the video, you name it.  
2. No one called that guy on what he said.  I waited a few beats and then I had to stop it so I waved my flag, but I am very disappointed that it had to be me.
3. Calling that guy out was not so simple.  He didn't get why he was being challenged, so then I was in the position of in some sense striking him down, and some of me didn't want to be doing that.  However, I also felt strongly that I had to show everyone else in the room that the kind of thing he was saying would not be tolerated, that they themselves would be protected from that when it was their turn.  This was not easy for me.
4. The next guy who spoke, who attempted to clarify what the first guy had said, was just as far off at first ("They're using a line of argument that has nothing to do with a magnetic model"), but when I kept saying "What observation are you making?" he eventually reduced his statement to:  "They are talking about energy."  It was really something to me, to see how when you stripped off all the insult and speculation, there was almost nothing left to what he had said.
5. In the entire whole-class conversations, the above was the only flag-waving, i.e. nobody waved a flag but me.  

I wonder if it might have been better if I had remembered to designate a ref.  I hear there was some helpful flag-waving within the small groups.  I wish I had left more time at the end of class for reflecting on our process.