It’s nearly the end of a trying year.
I’d hoped to keep this going longer, but it has not really grown, and whereas a few friends have commented, its not clear that dropping one of these in you inbox once a month is really working out.
So for those who have found some interest, you can find things of more than passing value on https://slowthinkingphysics.net.
For those of you that have read, thanks for your attention, and I hope some things have got you thinking.
A valediction:
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
And yet, maybe I am just stepping back to make times for other things.
"Making progress requires making subtle judgements, based on evidence, but unlikely to be determined solely by the research evidence available, is reliant on a courteous translation of the physics, adapting it appropriately for learners, and is not likely to be a quick fire process. "
I think this is right. I'm also going to be a bit heretical and suggest that for learners maybe it doesn't matter that much. If they engage for long enough they'll figure it out. But regurgitating research evidence maybe largely a waste of time. My classes and my courses and my background may differ a lot from the classes in a study and they course they were on and the background of the teachers involved, so much so that there is little to take away. Hence, rather than focussing on the physics directly, perhaps the focus should be on how teachers get the evidence from their own situation for themselves. So the shift would be to look at the tools they can use to do that, rather than outcomes of other people using those tools.