Exploring mirrors, recreating science and history, becoming a class community
Name
Cavicchi_Exploring_Mirrors_2009_New_Ed.pdf
Size
1.49 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f405e7c7b5a22cb74794c1783e00a9e5
Author(s)
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Date Issued
2009
Journal
The New Educator
Publisher
Association of Teacher Educators
Citation
Cavicchi, Elizabeth. "Exploring mirrors, recreating science and history, becoming a class community." The New Educator 5, no. 3 (2009): 249-273. https://doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2009.10399577
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
A teacher narrates from activities and discussions that arose among undergraduates and herself while doing critical explorations of mirrors. Surprised by light's behaviors, the students responded with curiosity, losing their dependence on answers as the format of school knowledge. Inadequacies in how participants supposed light works emerged in the context of reinventing historical discoveries, including Ptolemy's second century AD account of how curved mirrors reflect, Chinese burning mirrors reported in the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), and a ninth century AD Arabic translation of Euclid's surveying proposition. Using historical accounts only as a starting point and motivation, students' improvisational experiments explored personal interests and provided grounds for synthesizing new understandings of light and learning, and for forming relationships of community among each.
MIT Department
Edgerton Center (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2009.10399577
