Piaget in High School Instruction by Patricia J. Smith Air Academy High Schwl
I am a chemistryteacher at Air Academy High Schoolwhich is located on the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado. I t is the only high school in Colorado School District #20 servine an area of 150 suuare miles north of the city of Colorado fprings. About 40% of its 1.200 students are military dependents, the remainder are primarily children of husiness and professional people. The major industry of the city, other than military (Fort Carson, E n t Air Force Base, and NORAD are located here as well as the USAFA), is electronics. For the most part parents have high expectations for their children and are supportive of the schools. Both because of the presence of the military and the rapid growth of the city one of the uniuue features of the school district is the mobility of the at,t&nt onnulation. hieh~ school a 10%turnover is ex, ~ ~ At.the~ pected each year. Seventy perrent uf the high school students sav thev nlan to eo w collere afrer craduntion. 'l'he physical faliiti& at the h&h school &e adeq&te, hut not o ~ ~ t a n d i n g . The science department has average equipment and materials for a school of its size. The enrollment in science courses is unusuallv. high, . prob- ~ ably berause of the scientific interests of the community. In the 7fi-77 school vear300students. one-fourth of the student body, were enrolied in two levels of chemistry. Introduction to Chemistry and College Preparatory Chemistry. The students in hoth courses had a choice of teaching methods, selfpaced and traditional. The college preparatory c o w attracts students who intend to study science in college, while the students in the Introductory Chemistry course have been identified by themselves, their parents, teachers, or counselors as lacking interest in science or as being unprepared M succeed in the miire rigorousmllegepreparatory course. Last year the valedirtorian and a student whu graduated only a few from the bottom of his class were in the same Introductory Chemistry class. In the past year my teaching assignment included two classes of College Preparatory Chemistry, two Introductory Chemistm classes. and a moup of advanced students who studied organic a i d bioch&is&y. ~
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degree at Central College in Iowa, ' and an M.A. degree in chemistry at ! the Unwersity of Kansas. She spent two years at the Midwest Research Institute before returnine to academic work. Followine thke years at Ernporia ~ a n s a i College and six years at Central College, she began teaching chemistry in high school. She has been a faculty member at the Air Academy High School for three years. Patricia J. Smith Air Academy High School. USAFA. Colorado 80840
About five years ago, while working with college students unable w succeed in General Chemistry, I became interested in the works of Piaget as a possihle explanation for why the course seemed nearly impossible for some students. After doing some initial study and work with college students I transferred to my current high school chemistry tearhing oosition. Observation of high school students leads me to the conrlu.;ion that the prohlem is even greater at this level hecause of a wider ranre of students. At least half of the students are unable, not n&essarily unwilling, to understand such concepts as atomic structure, moles, polar and nonpolar bonds, and the periodic law. Careful analysis of student remarks is frequently surprising. Many studentsdon't really understand the concept of density although thev memorize an equation which allows them to Others can repeat the Laws of Consersolve most vation of Mass and Energy but their explanations of the results of experiments show that they believe neither. College preparatory students beg for a "sure"method to solve massmass and mass-volume nroblems because thev don't understand the idea of a mole. They remark, "I canalways do the problems, if you set them up." I then realized that in my lecup the prohlems for them-when tures that is what I d-set what thev reallv need is help in learning to set up problems solving, for ~~~~~~~~~~~~ he factor-label method of so useful for some students, is a cover up for many who liberally sprinkle their paper with factors without the slightest notion bf what they are doing. In Piagetian terms many of these students are not formal operational, but I was attempting to teach them formal concepts. They respond by using the method that has been successful since elementary school days: memorize an algorithm which can he used to solve the problems, which fools hoth teacher and student into thinking that the lesson has been learned. I was not surprised to find many investigators ( 1 ) have shown that approximately 50% of high school students are unable to use formal thouzht processes. Others have shown that students who are classified formal frequently do not o ~ e r a t ea t this level. Sheehan (2) showed that when formal siudentr; were taught using both conrrete and formal methods, those who had concrete instrurtion did significantly better on a subject matter test. Lawson and ~ e n n e r(3) found that students who were classified fully formal (111-B) were able to answer only 40-50% of the formal questions on hiology, chemistry, and physics tests validated by their classroom teachers and a panel of judges. Examination of nationally available high school chemistry curriculum materials, such as CHEM study, shows that most of them assume the ability to use formal operational thought processes. For example, one of the CHEM study versions ( 4 ) devotes approximately one page to observable properties of acids and bases and eighteen pages to acid base theory. At the end of the chapter there are 39 problems, all of which require the use of abstract concepts or memorized algorithms to obtain the answer. Three experiments for this chapter are calculation of an equilibrium constant, calculation of a heat of hvdration.. and determination of the molecular weight of an unknown acid hy titration. All of these topics appear in the - ~
