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Michael Lawrence, Ed.D. West Orange High School, 51 Conforti Ave., West Orange, NJ 07052, USA mlawrence16@nyc.rr.com

Mike Lawrence has spent his entire 33 year teaching career at West Orange (New Jersey) High School, where he has taught Honors and A.P. Physics.

“My path to the ISLE project started in 1990, when I began work on my Ed.D. in Science Education at Rutgers (under the guidance of the late George Pallrand). I was selected to work on the NSF grant Video Assessments for Science Teaching, during which time I developed videotaped assessments in geometrical optics and electromagnetism. The assessments involved students being presented, via videotape, with certain information about a particular phenomena. The tape was then stopped, and the students explained a prediction about what they thought would happen based on relevant principles (which I now call models). The tape would resume, and the actual phenomenon was observed. At this point, the tape was stopped again, and the students had the chance to explain a revision, given this new information. When I first field-tested these assessments with my own classes, they did terribly. This meant, of course, that I had to swallow my pride and admit that I was doing terribly as their teacher. This unpleasant experience left a lasting impression on me as to the importance of providing students with regular opportunities, in all areas of the curriculum, and in every type of classroom situation (labs, demonstrations, and tests), to make and test predictions based on appropriate models. Consequently, my entire approach to teaching underwent a dramatic (and necessary) change.

With my participation the ISLE program, this pedagogical change has become more thorough. I’ve become acutely aware of how and why students should learn physics in a way that is similar to the way in which physicists acquire knowledge: through a process of observation, pattern recognition, and model building, testing, and revising. Equally important, the program has given me a variety of methods by which that process can be implemented and assessed. I’ve used the entire ISLE approach throughout the Honors Physics Curriculum: Wave Motion, Optics, Electrostatics, Electricity, Electromagnetism, and Mechanics. In A.P. Physics, the students have already had the ISLE method as juniors. Consequently, the concentration is primarily on first reviewing the established models, and then using them (primarily) in application experiments that incorporate multiple models (such as the Conservation of Momentum and the Conservation of Energy). I also have opportunities to go through the entire ISLE method for models that weren’t developed in Honors Physics, such as with the Conservation of Angular Momentum or RC circuits.

ISLE (or it’s equivalent) is the way physics (and everything else) should be taught. This process allows students to think critically about what they’ve learned and why they’ve leaned it. It gives them genuine ownership of their knowledge. It allows them to answer the question, “Why do you believe what you believe?” More importantly, it gives them the means and the rationale to provide a substantive answer to this question regardless of the subject matter.

Links:

· ISLE papers

· Physics video website

· Scientific abilities

· ActivPhysics