Students Spend the Other Half of Our

¶ … students spend the other half of our time in our class doing hands-on laboratory and project work that is interesting and relevant to our lives (essentially pragmatic ideals). Reasoning and deduction are good, but we as a learners forget a concept we do not see and practice. To this end, my teacher made a laboratory investigation a major part of our curriculum, giving us the opportunity to observe and to put concepts into practice twice a week. Laboratories are done cooperatively with small groups of students. Sometimes written questions guide us through the thinking process to a specific conclusion. At other times, our teacher give us a single concept that we must somehow derive with no detailed questions to guide us (a pragmatic approach). Our teacher strives to ensure that investigations are relevant to our lives.

Once each semester, we also have the opportunity to undertake an in-depth investigation in small teams, the results of which we share in the class. In the pragmatic tradition, we are free to investigate anything so long as it somehow relates to the general concept that we are studying. There is often little repetition in a class with the six or seven student presentations covering a nice diversity of topics. But we generally address many of the concepts that my teacher desired to cover. After our presentations are over, my teacher addresses any additional concepts with lecture and discussion. This way, we have learned the essential concepts but it has mostly occurred through our own investigation.