Physics Colloquium - Fall 2005 - "How We Think: Should a teacher care?"
Edward F. (Joe) Redish
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
will give a free public presentation at the University of Maine
Thursday, December 8
Room 141, Bennett Hall at 8 p.m.
"How We Think: Should a teacher care?"
When we think about improving our teaching, we often focus on how to choose the content, create elegant presentations, or deliver engaging demonstrations. But since teaching and learning is an interaction between the instructor and the instructee, we really need to consider both ends of the interaction. When we don't explicitly discuss how people learn and understand, we tend to design our instruction based on our tacit assumptions. These may contain serious misconceptions and can lead to well-meant but ineffective teaching. In the past few decades, researchers in psychology, sociology, linguistics, and neuroscience have begun to learn a great deal about how people think and behave. Some of it is quite surprising, counterintuitive, and compelling. In this talk, I will discuss some of what has been learned and the implications for our teaching of science and mathematics.
Edward F. Redish is a Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland in College Park. He received his undergraduate degree Magna Cum Laude from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from M.I.T. in 1968. He has been at the University of Maryland ever since, and served as Chairman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy there from 1982-1985. His research in nuclear theory emphasized the theory of reactions and the quantum few-body problem. As a nuclear theorist he served on the national Nuclear Science Advisory Committee and served as Chair of the Program Committee for the Indiana University Cyclotron.
Since 1982 he has been actively involved in the subject of physics education. He was founder and co-principal investigator of the Maryland University Project in Physics Education and Technology (M.U.P.P.E.T.) and Comprehensive Unified Physics Learning Environment (CUPLE). His current research effort is devoted entirely to physics education.
In addition to the public lecture, Dr. Redish will give the weekly Physics Colloquium at 3:10 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 9 in Room 140, Bennett Hall, and speak at a lunchtime seminar.
This presentation is sponsored by The Shapley Visiting Lectureships program of the American Astronomical Society and by the UMaine Dept. of Physics and Astronomy as part of a series of public events in celebration of the Albert Einstein centennial year and the World Year of Physics.
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