Where Do Our Students Encounter Materials: Everywhere and Rarely
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Where Do Our Students Encounter Materials: Everywhere and Rarely George O. Zimmerman Boston University, Physics Department Boston, MA 02215 Isa Kaftal Zimmerman IKZAdvisors, LLC Boston, MA 02215 ABSTRACT In our increasingly digitized and safety conscious society, we tend to shield our children form real contact with the material world and tend to steer them increasingly to only virtual experiences. Appliances are not repaired but replaced. So are materials used in everyday life. As a consequence, we cannot assume experiences with materials which were a given in the past. In this article, we will concentrate on both K-12 and Undergraduate education with examples of the necessity of consciously encountering “materials” in our increasingly digital society, and how students can be taught to realize the properties and necessity of consciously encountering materials. We will draw our examples from the lack of that experience students bring to undergraduate research, and how that deficiency can be remedied. INTRODUCTION Teaching and learning are very complex subjects, as is the differentiation between what is being taught and what is being learned. Most of us will agree that many of the teaching methods currently used will work well with some students, and that some students will learn no matter what the teaching method. Education does not start in school or even pre-kindergarten. It starts at a very early age. This article is written to call attention to a trend in the developed world which deprives some of our youngsters of the experiences which enhance Materials learning in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). There are now many efforts to supplement and/or remedy this: computer simulations, robotics activities such as FIRST Robotics (usfirst.org), Project Lead the Way (pltw.org) and the Infinity Project (smu.edu/Lyle/Institutes/CaruthInstitute/K-12Programs/InfinityProject) and hands-on experiences. Lately there has been some recognition that these practices should be a basic element in the curriculum. Those efforts are, however, not universal. For years many of us have deplored the state of STEM education in the United States. The TIMSS study ranks U.S. fourth graders in 11th place in mathematics and eighth graders in 15th place in 2003. The scores were somewhat better in science with U.S. students in 6th and 8th place.1 The 2007 statistics are similar in mathematics: 11th in fourth grade and 15th in eighth grade; in science we came in at 8th and 11th, respectively, behind countries such as Latvia, Hungary, Slovenia. The results were somewhat better in the 2011 reports with some states coming in near the top. Despite many initiatives by the federal government,2 scientific organizations,3 and numerous efforts by teachers and local school districts, we still see newspaper articles such as “CEO caught in hiring dilemma,”4 describing the difficulty of the CEO of the Raytheon
Corporation to find qualified people to fill its technical staff positions. Such shortfalls exist despite the current state of
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