How we teach and how students learn- A mismatch

How we teach and how students learn — A mismatch? During the past fifteen years, a steadily increasing number of physicists have been contributing to the growth of a new field for scholarly inquiry: the learning and teaching of physics. We have by now a rich source of documented information in the many published reports of this research. At this point, it seems reasonable to ask whether we have learned anything from this collective experience …

…same skill in different contexts. The entire process requires time. Inevitably, this constraint places a limit on both the breadth of material that can be covered and the pace at which instruction can progress. New topics cannot be added without omitting others. Choices must be made. Unless we design instruction to meet the needs and abilities of students, efforts to update the teaching of introductory physics will produce little of either intellectual or motivational value.