General Education Goal

Course Goal

Part One:

Intellectual Abilities and Dispositions

A. Conceptual and Practical Understanding of Modes of Learning, Problem-Solving and Creative Inquiry

To acquire practice and experience in the processes of inquiry.

B. Information-Gathering, Reasoning, and Synthesizing Abilities

1. Skill in formulating questions and in setting goals for inquiry.

To gather experimental data and search for patterns among data.

2. Knowing how and when to make generalizations and value judgments.

To learn how generalizations are data driven.

3. Skill in generating and evaluating observations and evidence.

To make observations and measurements of various physical phenomenon. To use tables and graphs for organizing and presenting data as an aid in analyzing data.

4. Skill in making deductive inferences.

To look for explanation(s) of trends that appear in data.

5. Ability to use relevant quantitative methods.

To use various measurement devices to measure physical properties. These include mass balances, voltmeters, ammeters, clocks, thermometers, etc. Quantitative analysis is made of these measurements.

C. Reflective, Creative, and Critical Dispositions

1. Striving to be well informed and open-minded.

To learn the importance of evidence in drawing and inference.

2. Looking for multiple possibilities and being able to deal with ambiguity.

To recognize that errors reflect imprecision in measurements and to consider an acceptable range of error in measurements. To consider possible explanations for trends apparent in measured data.

3. Striving to achieve one’s best with persistence and imagination.

To aid students in experiments which require regular and consistent data collection and in searching for patterns among these data.

4. Willingness to make choices and to evaluate those choices.

5. Intellectual self-awareness: being conscious of one’s own thinking process, including the cultural and social contexts of that thinking.

Examining reasons for inferences drawn from experimental data.

D. Communication Skills

1. Writing and speaking with clarity and precision for diverse audiences.

To require the teaching of an elementary school physics lesson.

2. Making use of computers and other technological tools

To require the use of various meters and other measuring devices.

3. Interpreting and communicating visual information

To graph experimental data to seek underlying trends. To interpret pictorial data such as circuit diagrams.

Part Two:

Knowledge and Understanding

A. Understanding the Natural World

1. Knowledge of the physical Universe, including its origin and the physical laws governing it.

To explore various physical phenomena such as energy transfer, electric circuits, properties of lenses and mirrors, etc. To search for understanding of the principles guiding each.

2. Knowledge of living systems, including their nature, organization, and evolution.

3. Understanding the history and methods of scientific inquiry and alternative explanations of the natural world.

To put scientific discoveries in their historical context where appropriate.

4. Understanding the multiple influences on scientific inquiry and the consequences of science and technology.

5. Understanding the ways human choices affect the earth and living systems and the responsibilities of individual citizens and communities to preserve global resources.

B. Understanding of Culture and Society

1. Knowledge of the many expressions of culture, including

• 1 Understanding the unique shared ways of thinking, believing, and acting, developed by a people who live together over a long period of time.

• 2 Ability to conceptualize and trace the influences of community, institutions, and other constructions such as class, gender, and race

• 3 Familiarity with the ways in which culture is expressed artistically, through literature, performance, and artifact
• 4 Awareness of and appreciation for the ways in which culture and society influence and are influenced by work and leisure.

2. Understanding the sources and expression of diverse values throughout the world, including ethical, religious, aesthetic, political, and economic values as well as social and cultural priorities.

3. Ability to trace the impact of technology on societies and cultures for diverse audiences.

4. Understanding the ways human choices affect communities, from local to global, and responsibilities of individuals to assume the duties of citizenship.

5. Understanding the role of government regulation and of legal requirements, political processes, and financial and economic influences on decisions of individuals and society.

To note the influence of legislative acts on educational practices.

C. Self-Understanding

1. Understanding the nature of our humanness and how human beings are like and different from the other beings with whom they share the planet.

2. Knowledge of individual physical, emotional, intellectual, social and creative development as well as ability to use such knowledge to improve personal well-being.

3. Knowledge of individual physical, emotional, intellectual, social, historical, spatial, and cultural matrices into which the individual is born; and the influence of the unique set of experiences which the individual encounters.

4. Ability to perceive one’s own being not only from cognitive perspectives but also from those perspectives which come from exposure to and creative vision of the arts – to imagine the possibilities the future holds and to develop responsible goals for interactions with others, modes of personal expression, and roles in improving the world.