Teaching Thinking in Subject-Specific Contexts to Disadvantaged South African Communities.
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| Title: | Teaching Thinking in Subject-Specific Contexts to Disadvantaged South African Communities. |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Mehl, Merlin C., Lochhead, Jack |
| Peer Reviewed: | N |
| Page Count: | 17 |
| Publication Date: | 1987 |
| Document Type: | Reports - Research Speeches/Meeting Papers |
| Descriptors: | Cognitive Processes, College Science, Foreign Countries, Higher Education, Physics, Process Education, Science Curriculum, Science Education, Science Instruction, Secondary Education, Secondary School Science |
| Geographic Terms: | South Africa |
| Abstract: | This document characterizes South African education as resulting in large numbers of students who are poorly equipped to meet academic requirements of first-year university courses, especially in science related disciplines. It reports on a study designed to investigate the learning problems of disadvantaged South Africans in an attempt to identify approaches that can be developed to help alleviate them. The study focused primarily upon the difficulties experienced by such students in dealing with kinematics sections of a first-year physics course. A person-to-person interview technique was used as the students worked through some typical kinematics problems. The analysis of the interviews yielded a list of deficient cognitive functions and nine instruments were developed to compensate for these deficiencies; the strategy required for the use of a specific concept was developed as the concept was taught. This new approach was first used in the Physics 1B class of the University of the Western Cape (Capetown, South Africa), the class being divided into Test and Control groups. Results for the use of the concepts showed a 30% difference in favor of the test group and also showed a high level of enthusiasm for the experiment on the part of the test group students. The study concluded that there seem to be three approaches to teaching thinking: (1) teaching thinking free of specific content; (2) integrating thinking skills into content material by providing thinking strategies to give more meaningful access to the content of a discipline; and (3) determining the requisite thought processes for understanding and using concepts and laws, and then making these explicit in the development of the relevant curriculum materials. This paper indicates what may be attempted in the third area. (TW) |
| Entry Date: | 1988 |
| Accession Number: | ED291572 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | This document characterizes South African education as resulting in large numbers of students who are poorly equipped to meet academic requirements of first-year university courses, especially in science related disciplines. It reports on a study designed to investigate the learning problems of disadvantaged South Africans in an attempt to identify approaches that can be developed to help alleviate them. The study focused primarily upon the difficulties experienced by such students in dealing with kinematics sections of a first-year physics course. A person-to-person interview technique was used as the students worked through some typical kinematics problems. The analysis of the interviews yielded a list of deficient cognitive functions and nine instruments were developed to compensate for these deficiencies; the strategy required for the use of a specific concept was developed as the concept was taught. This new approach was first used in the Physics 1B class of the University of the Western Cape (Capetown, South Africa), the class being divided into Test and Control groups. Results for the use of the concepts showed a 30% difference in favor of the test group and also showed a high level of enthusiasm for the experiment on the part of the test group students. The study concluded that there seem to be three approaches to teaching thinking: (1) teaching thinking free of specific content; (2) integrating thinking skills into content material by providing thinking strategies to give more meaningful access to the content of a discipline; and (3) determining the requisite thought processes for understanding and using concepts and laws, and then making these explicit in the development of the relevant curriculum materials. This paper indicates what may be attempted in the third area. (TW) |
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