Socratic dialogue-inducing (SDI) labs1,2 are based on Arnold Arons' half-century of ethnographic research, listening carefully to students' responses to probing Socratic questions on physics, science, and ways of thinking, and culminating in his landmark Teaching Introductory Physics.3 They utilize “interactive engagement” methods4 and are designed, in part, to help students think like scientists, e.g., to: (1) appreciate the need for operational definitions; (2) use and interpret pictorial, graphical, vectorial, mathematical, and written representations; and (3) consider dimensions, thought experiments, and limiting conditions. After giving some SDI lab examples from those categories, I conclude that the SDI lab attempts to help students think like scientists have been relatively successful.
REFERENCES[ALL URLS WERE ACCESSED 29 NOV. 2011.]
SDI #2 Pre-Lab Assignment Operational Definitions of Kinematic Terms, as well as the SDI lab manuals referred to in this paper: #0.1, Frames of Reference, Position, and Vectors; #0.2, Introduction to Kinematics; #1, Newton's First and Third Laws; #2, Newton's Second Law; and #3, Circular Motion and Frictional Forces, are all online at the SDI lab website, bit.ly/9nGd3M, but to save space they will not be separately referenced. Some Teacher's Guides are available by request to rrhake@earthlink. net.
The Teacher's Guide to SDI Lab 0.2 Introduction to Kinematics, states: “Although about 70% of students entering the non-calculus-based Indiana University (IU) introductory physics course have completed a university calculus course, almost none seems to have the foggiest notion of the graphical meaning of a derivative or integral, as addressed in this section. Similar calculus illiteracy is commonly found among students in calculus-based introductory physics courses at IU. In my judgment, these calculus interpretations are essential to the crucial operational definitions of instantaneous position, velocity, and acceleration: the term ‘substantive non-calculus-based mechanics course’ is an oxymoron”
Ground Rules for SDI labs are given in SDI Lab #0.1 Frames of Reference, Position, and Vectors. Rule #5 states: “In some cases you will draw a series of ‘snapshot sketches’ at sequential instants of time, e.g., , , . In such cases always show clocks near each sketch to emphasize the time sequence.” A figure and explanation similar to that of the present Fig. 1 is shown.
SDI Lab Ground Rule #11 states: “The lab manual questions are designed to help you think about the experiments and how they relate to Newton's laws. You will often be asked to predict the outcome of an experiment and then perform that experiment. A curly bracket {……} indicates that you should encircle (O) a response within the bracket and then, we insist, briefly explain or justify your answers in the space provided on these sheets. The letters {Y, N, U, NOT} stand for {Yes, No, Uncertain, None of These}.” And the Teacher's Guide to SDI Lab #0.1 Introduction to Kinematics states: “Requiring students to encircle one of {Y, N, U, NOT} serves to initiate their thinking processes and forces them to give some definite signal (useful to dialogists) as to their mental states even if they are unable, at the moment, to clearly articulate those states. An annotator's check (correct) or cross (wrong) just above an encirclement yields quick and valuable feedback to a student. Requiring students to write explanations or justifications induces at least some to partake of the ‘intolerable labor of thought, that most distasteful of all our activities’ (Justice Learned Hand as quoted by Arons in his book cited in Ref. 3, p. 383). To avoid this painful and unaccustomed activity, students may lapse into merely encircling a letter unless the justification rule is rigidly enforced.”