Nonlinear Psychometric Thresholds for Physics and Mathematics

calmom
Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:28:02 +0000

Thanks for that link. The part that stood out for me was this quote:

“The classes only seem to be really working for about 10 percent of the students,” Arizona State’s Hestenes says. “And I maintain, I think all the evidence indicates, that these 10 percent are the students that would learn it even without the instructor. They essentially learn it on their own.”



That is what I was getting at with my comment about the alternative viewpoint – that the numbers could be seen to reflect a failure in teaching. I’m not saying the profs should be offering remedial classes – I’m saying that in a university environment, the goal of a good teacher should be to reach beyond the 10% who would be able to learn it all on their own anyway.

I’m glad to see that there is at least a small group of physics professors who are thinking along those lines.