On May 4, 1:26=A0pm, njoy00 <njo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> The research article that has sparked the debate about whether we
> should scrap using manipulatives or using real world math problems in
> elementary grades =A0is online at
> cogdev.cog.ohio-state.edu/PBR-2005-published.pdf
> It was published originally in 2004 =A0in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
> and Ohio State has it on their site.
> The Science Journal wants $10.00 for the article that they have just
> published. Once you download it from Ohio State I suggest you hold on
> to it although the research was sup****ted by a grant from the National
> Science Foundation =A0http://www.nsf.gov/
>
> Read it yourself before you decide if these journalists actually read
> the research themselves or just assumed that the authors summary is
> logical, based on research done with psych college students who were
> getting credit for doing so.
> How the researchers justified jumping from their study to using
> manipulatives and concrete problems with younger children is hogwash
> IMHO.
>
> We do ourselves and the students we teach a horrible injustice when we
> let others dictate how we are going to teach based on "conclusions"
> from research based re****ts without further scrutiny.
>
> If anyone paid $10 for the Science Journal article or knows the
> actually research study and it is different than the one from Ohio
> State please let us know.
>
> Now, if they had worked with elementary age students and had some
> conclusions it might be believable. Is there research that suggests
> college age students and elementary age students learn the same way?
> What about all the studies on cognitive and behavioral development?
> Again, I think we need to know a lot more before some administrators
> come in and take away all "the toys" in the "name of research".
I have the actual article. Here it is.
http://www.apecknowledgebank.org/resources/downloads/Science_Kaminski.pd
f
http://tinyurl.com/5gmuvx
As I have said previously I think this study has a seriously flawed
methodology and does not sup****t the comclusion the authors claim.
This is what i wrote the author of the study.
Subject: Congratulations on your article in science but...
Dear Dr Kaminski,
I am a science and math educator with a lot of practical experience
(20 years) in teaching abstract and generalized ideas to the 6 grade
through college crowd. I like very much the topics you are tackling in
your research. I consider it very im****tant that our practice be
carefully and systematically reviewed. Nevertheless, I feel I must
harshly criticize your study. I don't mean this as a personal attack
or to discourage your further work on this subject. It is just that
these topics are critically im****tant to education and so I feel
compelled to advocate strongly when I see an im****tant mistake. So far
your study has received a lot of uncritical re****tage in the popular
press. I am out of touch with how it has been received in the academic
community.
There is a major problem with the study that most people don't seem to
be talking about. That is, your sloppy use of the concept of concrete
versus generic instantiations. The concrete example you show is just a
plain bad example because it is counter intuitive rather than building
on the knowledge of the student. You use familiar objects such as
pitchers and water but you use them a physically unrealistic way.
Students have plenty of experience with pitchers and water. They don't
have experience with pitchers and water in which adding more water
causes there to be less. Of course the students are going to
experience interference effects because they are trying to learn about
something unnatural while using something with completely
contradictory familiar properties as an example.
Analogies have to be based off something that students actually know
the behavior of. We teach modular arithmetic (essentially what you are
teaching students) with clocks because students already have the
notion of a clock being something that starts over after we reach 12.
We don't teach modular arithmetic using pitchers of water, because
pitchers of water do not restart when you reach 3 parts (like they do
in your "concrete" examples). Your examples are not concrete or
tangible, they are magical and fanciful.
The only lesson to be gleaned from this study is an im****tant one but
not addressed in the conclusion. Concrete examples need to be familiar
and realistic to be useful, otherwise they can interfere with
learning. For example using piles of dirt and holes is good for
teaching positive numbers and negative numbers, but using apples made
out of matter and antimatter is not because students have experience
with apples, but not with apples (which carry certain connotations)
and anti-apples (which are alien objects to students).
Now, I am not saying that your conclusion is necessarily wrong (though
I think it probably is based on my experience). I am saying that your
experimental design does not falsify the hypothesis that real world
examples are more effective than generic symbolic teaching or sup****t
your conclusion that generic symbolic teaching is better for
generalization. It does falsify the hypothesis that instantiations of
abstract ideas using common objects behaving in unrealistic ways,
enhances or at least does not harm the learning process.
There are some other problems with generalizing results with college
students to grade school, but I am sure that you will have heard or
thought of most of them.
Before I wrote you, I circulated your article among some friends and
without any prompting that I thought there was anything wrong with the
article, they spontaneously nailed the same flaw. Some of the less
harsh responses were:
"If you combine 2/3 of a cup of fluid with another 2/3 of a cup of
fluid
you don't get 1/3 cup. You get a full cup with a puddle around it.
Students have trouble learning from examples that are wrong? What a
surprise."
and
"Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one where the visuals of the concrete
examples left me scratching my head - the purpose of an illustration
is to ILLUSTRATE - that was a train wreck. No wonder the kids don't
understand the principles after these 'concrete' lessons."
I sincerely wish you well and will continue to follow research like
this. I hope what I have said does not discourage you and that you
find it of some use.
Sincerely
Michael Michalchik
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