In her presentation for the EPSRI Congress today, Emma talked about the path of her own understanding about energy over the course of the week, and we all enjoyed what a rich and complex path it was. Afterwards, Rachel and I discussed how great it is that the Energy Project instructional paradigm actually allows for someone to create their own path, and that everyone's path can be unique such that the instructors can be surprised and learn from each student's path. In Physics by Inquiry, teachers are asked at the end of the course to write a reflection essay about their learning path, but of course everybody's learning path is the same (if they did it right) because it is premeditated and carefully laid out by the curriculum. You are not allowed to deviate because who knows where you might end up if you did that.
Wouldn't it be cool to ask the teachers in our course to write this kind of reflection essay about their path of learning? Not only because it would be neat for us to learn what they've made of it all, but also because it would be useful for us to demonstrate to the rest of the world what they've made of it all. Some people in the PER Community have expressed concern over whether what's happening in our courses really adds up to all that much, and this might be just the kind of thing to help not just alleviate those fears, but demonstrate the cool stuff our teachers are doing.
What a great idea! Didn't Hunter ask the E2 participants last year for some sort of reflection? Do we have those?
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ReplyDelete@Stamatis: I was in the room this year when Hunter asked the UE2 folks to write a reflective statement on the last day (Friday July 1). If I recall correctly, the broad prompts were to write reflectively about 1)energy and 2)teaching and learning. He collected them, I think, so they might be available.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think that the process/prompt might need to be a little more formal (don't know if that's the right word) in order to generate rich narrative reflections.
This is a cool idea. My first thought is: well, we can't assign a paper, the way PEG does, because we don't have the teachers for long enough. But it does seem like assigning a longer reflection would be appropriate / doable, maybe with some warm-up reflections on the same theme earlier in the course?
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