Course description for mechanics:

The modeling workshop in mechanics thoroughly addresses most aspects of high school physics teaching, including the integration of teaching methods with course content as it should be done in the high school classroom. The workshop incorporates up-to-date results of physics education research, best high school curriculum materials, use of technology, and experience in collaborative learning and guidance.

Participants are introduced to the Modeling Method as a systematic approach to the design of curriculum and instruction. Content of the entire first semester course in high school physics (mechanics) is reorganized around five basic models to increase its structural coherence. Participants are supplied with a complete set of course materials and work through all the activities alternately in the roles of student or teacher.

Teachers improve their physics content knowledge and are equipped with a robust teaching methodology for developing student abilities to:

* make sense of physical experience,

* understand scientific claims,

* articulate coherent opinions of their own and defend them with cogent arguments,

* evaluate evidence in support of justified belief.

Specifically, teachers learn to:

* ground their teaching in a well-defined pedagogical framework (Modeling Theory), rather than following rules of thumb;

* organize course content around scientific models as coherent units of structured knowledge;

* engage students collaboratively in making and using models to describe, to explain, to predict, to design and control physical phenomena;

* involve students in using computers as scientific tools for collecting, organizing, analyzing, visualizing, and modeling real data;

* assess student understanding in more meaningful ways and experiment with more authentic means of assessment;

* continuously improve and update instruction with new software, curriculum materials and insights from educational research;

* work collaboratively in action research teams to mutually improve their teaching practice.

Since "teachers teach as they have been taught," the workshop includes extensive practice in implementing the curriculum as intended for high school classes. Participants rotate through roles of student and instructor as they practice techniques of guided inquiry and cooperative learning. Plans and techniques for raising the level of discourse in classroom discussions and student presentations are emphasized.

Teachers are immersed in studying the physics content of the entire semester, providing indepth remediation for under-prepared teachers. Altogether, the Modeling Workshop provides a detailed implementation of the National Science Education Standards.

In 2001 Modeling Instruction was designated by an Expert Panel of the U.S. Dept. of Education as an EXEMPLARY K-12 science program.

An excerpt written in 2008by David Hestenes, Research Professor of Physics at Arizona State University. Dr. Hestenes and Dr. Malcolm Wells, a high school physics teacher, founded Modeling Instruction.

Modeling Instruction’s big difference from other approaches is that all stages of inquiry are structured by modeling principles. Typical inquiry activities (or investigations) are organized into modeling cycles about two weeks long.

The teacher subtly guides students through the activities with modeling discourse, which means that the teacher promotes framing all classroom discourse in terms of models and modeling. The aim is to sensitize students to the structure of scientific knowledge, in both declarative and procedural aspects.

The culmination of student modeling activities is reporting and discussing outcomes in a whiteboard session. This may be where the deepest student learning takes place, because it stimulates assessing and consolidating the whole experience in recent modeling activities. Whiteboard sessions have become a signature feature of the Modeling Method, because they are flexible and easy to implement, and so effective in supporting rich classroom interactions. Each student team summarizes its model and evidence on a small (2ft  2.5ft) whiteboard that is easily displayed to the entire class. This serves as a focus for the team’s report and ensuing discussion. Comparison of whiteboards from different teams is often productively provocative. The main point is that class discussion is centered on visible symbolic inscriptions that serve as an anchor for shared understanding.

Primacy of modeling over problem solving.

In Modeling Instruction, problem solving is addressed as a special case of modeling and model-based reasoning. Students are taught that the solution to a problem follows directly from a model of the problem situation. The modeling cycle applies equally well to solving artificial textbook problems and significant real world problems of great complexity. This approach is readily transferred to mathematics teaching, as math teachers who attend our workshops learn!

The modeling method, with its emphasis on coherence and self-consistency of the model, is especially well-suited to detection and correction of ill-posed problems, where the given information is either defective or insufficient. Moreover, students are thrilled when they realize that a single model generates solutions to an unlimited number of problems. Indeed, the Modeling Workshops teach that six basic models suffice to solve almost any mechanics problem in high school physics. Modeling promotes expert problem solving behavior in students.

Synopsis of Modeling Workshops:

Three-week Modeling Workshops in physics, chemistry, and physical science address most aspects of high school teaching and are immediately useful in the classroom. Workshops include current results of science education research, best high school curriculum materials, effective use of technology, and experience in collaborative learning and guidance. Each workshop includes content for one semester. Objectives are to develop skill in a robust teaching methodology; the modeling method; to deepen content knowledge; and to learn to use computers as scientific tools for data acquisition, analysis and modeling.

Teachers say:

"Thanks to taking physics modeling course work, I am highly qualified in physics."

"I learned a tremendous amount and am all fired up to teach physics this fall!"

"I learned more about teaching and physics this summer than in 5 years of college!"

"Great chem workshop."

"It was, without a doubt, the single greatest professional development experience of my

career."

"I'm a better teacher after modeling, I like my job more, I feel the kids walk away with real transferable skills."

"It moves students in the direction of being independent learners, and it puts the responsibility for learning where it belongs - on the students."

"The Modeling program is the only one I have found that is truly grounded in how students learn and attacks head-on the misconceptions students have."

"After teaching science for 30 years, I felt that it was going to be too hard to change my style of teaching... Today my approach is completely changed and I have no desire to ever return to my old way of teaching physics by lecture, cookbook labs, etc. My students are excited about learning physics."

"It is the finest example of constructivist teaching in the U.S. It has changed my life and the way I teach."

"In thirty years of teaching, nothing has impacted my teaching, since my first days of learning how to teach science in undergraduate school, like the ideas I've learned in modeling. It is the BEST idea to enter the teaching methods I have ever seen." Jane Nelson, Orlando FL

"After the first year of teaching using the modeling method, I wished I had learned about modeling years ago." David Braunschweig, Madison, WI

"Modeling has permanently changed my methodology. I have taken modeling as learned in the physics content area and employed it in other classes (astronomy, geology, physical science). It has forced me to "clean house", reduced content volume in these other courses and triggered a restructuring of lab/worksheet material to fit modeling. Student response to these changes have been overwhelmingly POSITIVE." Tom Todd, suburb of Chicago

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