Bonnie Shapiro, Faculty of Education, attempts to understand why abstract concepts in physics are difficult to grasp for both children and their instructors. It s a pervasive pedagogical problem. We have to move away from the idea of the learner as a blank slate. Students lose confidence in themselves as science learners as they become less personally involved in the process. Teachers can also learn a great deal about teaching the subject matter by observing how their students grapple with the material.
Education research is very useful to teachers.
Some teachers are able to teach this way naturally, others need good role models to follow. Each program in the series showcases a different concept and shows interviews with students and their teachers. Students are asked to explain how they perceive a concept, such as the seasons, before the teacher has taught the lesson and after. At one point in the series, Harvard graduates were asked on their convocation day to explain how the seasons worked. Interestingly, most gave the same incorrect answer as mentioned above, with the earth and sun moving closer and farther apart.