Facet based instruction, developed by Jim Minstrell, is a technique of instruction
based on the idea that students enter a class with preconceived ideas on the
topic or, if the material is totally new, very rapidly develop such ideas. The
ideas usually have a grain of truth, but may not be in accord with current scientific
concepts. The teacher proceeds by determining what these preconceived ideas
are and tailoring instruction to the students ideas, moving from the original
notions to current scientific beliefs. To Cognitive Psychologists, facet based
instruction will appear closely related to schema theory, and indeed the jargon
of the two approaches is almost interchangeable. Facet based instruction assumes
that a teacher knows what the preconceived ideas are, how to identify them,
and what to do with them when they are found. These assumptions are often not
met, for a great deal of teacher training (including training for university
professors) emphasizes how to present t! he desired beliefs clearly, rather
than engaging in the dialog anticipated by facet based instruction. Hunt, Minstrell,
and their several colleagues over the last 15 years have developed a series
of computer programs, collectively referred to as DIAGNOSER, that assist teachers
by providing student exercises based on the facet based instruction model, offer
indicated instruction, report to teachers the ideas that students seem to have,
and provide teachers with suggestions for in-class exercises based on reported
student performance.
The current version of DIAGNOSER is a WWW based program. It has been operational
for instruction in middle school and high school physics for the past two years.
Thousands of students and teachers, world wide, have made some use of the program.
Last year we conducted a major evaluation of the effectiveness of DIAGNOSER,
by examining the performance of students who had used the DIAGNOSER program
on the Washington State Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) examinations.
Although we do not regard the WASL examination as the best sort of evaluation
of this sort of program, it is an important de facto criterion for the success
of teaching methods. Students using DIAGNOSER obtained substantially higher
scores on the WASL examinations, showing the efficacy of the program by conventional
standards. In addition, data gathered internal to the DIAGNOSER itself provides
a new way of looking at the organization of students' concepts, a way more compatible
with cognitive psychology than ! the conventional right-wrong scoring pervasive
in education. The new way could be applied to many other areas of knowledge
than those we have studied, both in and out of science.
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