Metacognition
As I put together the new version of my text book I have been thinking of the way we present the course to our students and if it follows the "IB way" of doing it. What is the IB way? Well it is succinctly put in a statement to be found in the physics updates for university admissions.
" The course aims to develop understandings that connect factual, procedural and metacognitive knowledge and recognizes the importance of connecting learning with conceptual understanding. This includes a non-linear, ongoing process of adding new knowledge, evolving understandings and identifying misconceptions."
To be honest I have never studied the theory that goes behind this. I left university after completing my bachelors in physics and went straight into the classroom. There I learnt by trial and error. I took the chapter on electric fields and analysed how the material is presented and what knowledge the student require to be able to complete it. I could just as well have used the activity pages on electric fields from this website.
- We observe the balloons and wonder why they repel.
- We can't explain this but can see the similarity with gravity.
- use concept of gravitational field to explain electricity.
- define electric field strength.
- gravity is related to mass electricity must be related to some property of matter. Charge
- Gravity follows an inverse square law maybe electricity does too. Experiment confirms.
- we observe attraction between balloon and jumper, charge has two forms.
- Force is a vector, in 1D sign is direction.
- the sign of charge will change the sign of force, let's say that charge can be positive or negative.
- Coulombs law for point charges.
- What about a collection of points?
- use knowledge of vector addition to solve problems.
- from mechanics we know about work and energy. Moving a charge in an electric field requires a force so work is done.
- from mechanics potential energy = work done placing an object
- introduce the concept of electric potential energy.
- from mechanics work done = area under graph
- from maths area of graph is the integral of the function, the reverse of integration is differentiation so the gradient of the PE vs position graph = force
- From gravitation we have the concept of potential, apply this to electric fields to define electric potential.
- misconception: when the field strength is zero the potential is also zero. Apply the definitions of potential and field strength to a point midway between two equal and opposite charges to show this is not true.
- Observation: A simple circuit. We call this an electric circuit but what is the connection between what we have just learnt and the circuit?
And it goes on, having added to our knowledge we can now use what we know about mechanics and electricity to develop an understanding of atomic structure.
I think this shows nicely how the structure of the book connects factual procedural and metacognitive knowledge and recognizes the importance of connecting learning with conceptual understanding. Including a non-linear, ongoing process of adding new knowledge, evolving understandings and identifying misconceptions. It would be quite interesting to do this for the whole book. Not so interesting that I am going to do it though. As a matter of interest I picked out my old A'level textbook from when I was at school, the material was presented in a very different way, there was no ongoing narrative, each topic was presented independently, definitions > Laws > exercises > problems. Education has moved on in almost 50 years.