The students know best; 'the curse of knowledge'

Have been hearing and reading some interesting stuff while here on the problems caused by the chasm between 'expert' and 'novice' views of a subject. The general idea is that when you know something, it is extremely difficult to think about it from the perspective of someone who does not know it. This has been termed ' the curse of knowledge' by educational psychologists.

Carl Wieman, writing a piece for the APS News 'back page' feature has offered this as a reason for the gap between the good intentions of physics lecturers and the lack of achievements of a (growing) number of students. In other words, we're all nice guys and gals really and want our students to succeed, but we've forgotten (or we don't know) what it is to not know. So, our carefully-crafted instruction - be it lecture, demonstration, lab, tutorial or exam - can go wonderfully well (from our point of view), but in some cases not effect student learning as much as we *think* it does, or sometimes not at all! (Some studies have shown a decrease in understanding of concepts after things like a lecture demonstration!)

So knowing what our students know, and how that changes over a period of time, seems to be an essential ingredient. I am struck by the amount of effort that has gone into developing various instruments to evaluate just that. Of course, I knew about the FCI and the MBT tests for classical mechanics, but there are many more (and a few lists are at the bottom of this post).

Concept tests / evaluation instruments list

from Maryland

workshop physics (Priscilla Laws)