Publicationshttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532312026-04-08T19:25:29Z2026-04-08T19:25:29ZCuriosity Opens Relationships of the World and with Others: Narratives from Doing Teaching and Learning Through CuriosityCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1556632026-03-23T03:09:35Z2024-06-23T00:00:00ZCuriosity Opens Relationships of the World and with Others: Narratives from Doing Teaching and Learning Through Curiosity
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
What potentials does curiosity bear for education? Some characterizations portray curiosity as self-motivated search for answers, a drive conformable with conventional education’s imperative for correct answers. For participants in this study, curiosity engages them with their relationships to the world. This article examines curiosity from along my developing in learning and teaching. While school settings limited or excluded curiosity, both for me as a student and as a teacher, it relates how I encountered the value of curiosity in examples of my father, mentors, and other experiences. Beginning with a gradual and uncertain process, I transitioned from being an educator bound by conventional expectations, to a teacher-researcher creating environments where learners’ expressions and acts of curiosity constitute the educational work that I actively support and seek to extend. Curiosity in the classroom generates trajectories and engagements that differ from conventional instruction. This article demonstrates and researches the educational work of curiosity, through contextual narratives from my teaching as a beginner at accommodating students’ curiosity, and from my recent teaching, where students and I more fully commit to the relational and educational possibilities of encouraging curiosity. In facilitating these experiences, I apply the research pedagogy of Eleanor Duckworth, ‘critical exploration in the classroom’. In narratives from my teaching, curiosity propels exploring relationships among: floating and sinking; trees, leaves and acorns; dye in water; maple sap sweetness; bubbles in water; and permutations of objects. Provocations from historical works include: Leonardo’s drawings; Hooke’s and Ramón y Cajal’s microscopy; Keats’ “negative capability”; Dewey’s reflections on interdependency among children and adults; and children’s creations in Reggio Emilia preschools. As experience builds through curiosity, relations deepen in ways simultaneously unadulterated—exploring unconstrained—and unchildlike—sustaining commitment. Participants characterize our process as having “No End Goal” imposed from outside themselves, unlike formal instruction that suppresses personal curiosity in favor of pre-ordained goals. The natural world, opened by curiosity, embodies ever-emerging relationships that accommodate concurrent widening and deepening of learners’ involvement and realizations. Learning experiences happening through relationships are infused with emotion, aesthetic qualities, and social connections and concerns.
2024-06-23T00:00:00ZReview of Split and Splice: A Phenomenology of ExperimentationCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1548372026-03-26T03:10:07Z2024-03-01T00:00:00ZReview of Split and Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2024-03-01T00:00:00ZNonlinear optics and organic materials Part 2Tripathy, SukantCavicchi, ElizabethKumar, JayantKumar, R. Saihttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532462023-12-23T03:01:33Z1989-01-01T00:00:00ZNonlinear optics and organic materials Part 2
Tripathy, Sukant; Cavicchi, Elizabeth; Kumar, Jayant; Kumar, R. Sai
1989-01-01T00:00:00ZOrganic materials for nonlinear optics Part 1Tripathy, SukantCavicchi, ElizabethKumar, JayantKumar, R. Saihttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532452023-12-23T03:07:37Z1989-01-01T00:00:00ZOrganic materials for nonlinear optics Part 1
Tripathy, Sukant; Cavicchi, Elizabeth; Kumar, Jayant; Kumar, R. Sai
1989-01-01T00:00:00ZExperimenting with magnetism: Ways of learning of Joann and FaradayCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532442023-12-23T03:03:45Z1997-01-01T00:00:00ZExperimenting with magnetism: Ways of learning of Joann and Faraday
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
This paper narrates learning as it evolved through experimental work and interpretation in two distinct investigations: the explorations of permanent magnets and needles conducted by a student, Joann, as I interactively interviewed her, and Faraday’s initial experimenting with diamagnetism, as documented in his Diary. Both investigators puzzled over details, revisited their confusions resiliently, and invented analogies as ways of extending their questioning; ‘‘misconceptions’’ and conflict were not explicit to their process. Additionally, Faraday formed interpretations—and doubts critiquing them—that drew upon his extensive experience with magnetism’s spatial behaviors. These two cases suggest that physics instruction could include opportunities for students’ development of their own investigatory learning.
1997-01-01T00:00:00ZPlaying with LightCavicchi, ElizabethHughes-McDonnell, FionLucht, Petrahttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532422023-12-23T04:03:06Z2001-01-01T00:00:00ZPlaying with Light
Cavicchi, Elizabeth; Hughes-McDonnell, Fion; Lucht, Petra
The authors conducted action research by developing workshops that involved teacher-participants in their own exploratory learning. The authors facilitated participants in researching of what they noticed, and wanted to understand about light and shadows by structuring the environment, and the questions that were asked of them, in ways that integrated practices of teaching into those of researching. During the workshops, transitions evolved in how participants used materials to make light and dark effects and interacted with each other. Transactions also occurred in how the authors intervened to teach and research what participants did, and to encourage their reflective observations. It is proposed that such explorations offer new beginnings for extending understandings of physical phenomena and of the world, as made through our actions and thoughts.
2001-01-01T00:00:00ZPainting the moonCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532402023-12-23T03:32:26Z1991-01-01T00:00:00ZPainting the moon
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Wording for Permission for Image by Galileo : "Su concessione del Ministero della Cultura - Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. E' vietata ogni ulteriore riproduzione con qualsiasi mezzo".
1991-01-01T00:00:00ZFrances Gertrude Wick (1875-1941)Cavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532392023-12-23T03:43:47Z1993-01-01T00:00:00ZFrances Gertrude Wick (1875-1941)
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
1993-01-01T00:00:00ZNonlinear Optical Spectroscopy of PolymersCavicchi, ElizabethKumar, JayantTripathy, Sukanihttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532372023-12-23T03:25:43Z1989-01-01T00:00:00ZNonlinear Optical Spectroscopy of Polymers
Cavicchi, Elizabeth; Kumar, Jayant; Tripathy, Sukani
1989-01-01T00:00:00ZExperimenting with Wires, Batteries, Bulbs and the Induction Coil: Narratives of Teaching and Learning Physics in the Electrical Investigations of Laura, David, Jamie, Myself and the Nineteenth Century Experimenters -- Our Developments and InstrumentsCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532332023-12-23T03:05:28Z1999-01-01T00:00:00ZExperimenting with Wires, Batteries, Bulbs and the Induction Coil: Narratives of Teaching and Learning Physics in the Electrical Investigations of Laura, David, Jamie, Myself and the Nineteenth Century Experimenters -- Our Developments and Instruments
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
1999-01-01T00:00:00ZWays of Learning Physics: Magnets, Needles, FieldsCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1532322023-12-23T03:28:35Z1995-12-01T00:00:00ZWays of Learning Physics: Magnets, Needles, Fields
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
1995-12-01T00:00:00ZMirrors, swinging weights, lightbulbs…: Simple experiments and history help a class become a communityCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1521772023-09-16T03:49:03Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZMirrors, swinging weights, lightbulbs…: Simple experiments and history help a class become a community
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZThe spiral conductor of Charles Grafton Page: Reconstructing experience with the body, more options, and ambiguityCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1521762023-09-16T03:38:21Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZThe spiral conductor of Charles Grafton Page: Reconstructing experience with the body, more options, and ambiguity
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Following discoveries of self-induction made by Faraday (1834) and Henry (1832/1835), Harvard medical student Charles Grafton Page took bodily shocks in 1836 from his homemade spiralled conductor while interrupting its battery connection. Unlike his famous predecessors, Page inserted connectors intermediate along the conductor which increased experimental options: shocks could be taken across any interval. Surprisingly, Page felt shocks everywhere, even where no direct battery current passed. Acupuncture needles amplified his sensitivity. Bodily contact across greater spiral spans yielded greater shocks. Having no interpretation for these effects, Page researched productively, later developing the instrument and its interpretations in a community. I reconstructed Page’s experiment with a spiralled copper foil, an oscilloscope as detector, resistor substitute for the body, flashlight batteries and switch. Across intervals where Page reported increased shock, I encountered variable signals. My methods evolved to include activating the spiral with periodic signals or my spur wheel switch, and picturing data by alterative views. These techniques functioned like Page’s connectors to open up options for further testing. Page and I experienced ambiguity in the experimental effects and in interpreting what happened. In both the original experiment and its reconstruction, productive means of working with ambiguity – not dispelling it—emerged through exploratory generation of new options for experimenting and thought.
2011-01-01T00:00:00ZShadows of Light and History in Explorative Teaching and LearningCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1521722023-09-16T03:02:06Z2013-01-01T00:00:00ZShadows of Light and History in Explorative Teaching and Learning
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Shadows are everyday phenomena that intrigued people in the past and remain accessible today. Shadows and history provided the context for Jab activities among two teachers who participated with me as learners under the research pedagogy of critical exploration. Eleanor Duckworth developed critical exploration from the clinical interviewing of Jean Piaget and Biirbe/ lnhe/der and classroom practices of the 1960s Elementary Science Study. During critical explorations, learners explore a subject matter without being told what to do or find; the teacher supports these investigations without imposing an expected path. During this study, two teachers explored while looking for each other in a mirror and observing shadows cast by the sun and candles. They responded to historical observations by lbn alHaytham, Leonardo da Vinci and Jean Piaget. Together the teachers extended their understandings of light, history and the gy nastic art of following another learner's outlook. In the process, these teachers deepened their capacities for supporting curiosity among the children and students whose learning comes under their care. This example of teaching and learning through critical exploration can empower other teachers to launch students on personal journeys of discovery.
2013-01-01T00:00:00ZReflections on the Teaching of Gerbert of AurillacCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1521692023-09-16T03:27:10Z2010-01-01T00:00:00ZReflections on the Teaching of Gerbert of Aurillac
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
For one born to French peasants, Gerbert took advantage of exceptional educational opportunities: monastic training at Aurillac; mathematical studies in Spain; tutoring the Pope and Emperor in Rome. Serving Reims cathedral school for twenty-five years, Gerbert transformed its curriculum and practices; his students disseminated these innovations across Europe. Gerbert's teaching was research: seeking out unsanctioned, classical texts; analyzing mathematical arguments; observing the sky. His students did what they learned: speaking; observing; making music. He invented instructional instruments: diagrams; an abacus; astronomical spheres. He nurtured relationships of trust among teachers and students. Gerbert's creativity is a provocative impetus for us to face pedagogic inadequacies and develop responsive teaching that stands the test of time.
2010-01-01T00:00:00ZEarth Grounds and Heavenly Spires: Lightning Rod Men, Patent Inventors and TelegraphersCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1521672023-09-16T03:04:30Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZEarth Grounds and Heavenly Spires: Lightning Rod Men, Patent Inventors and Telegraphers
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZDream Trains, Electromagnetic Possibilities and Trial Runs: Early Explorations in Electromagnetic Traction by RailCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1521642023-09-16T03:27:57Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZDream Trains, Electromagnetic Possibilities and Trial Runs: Early Explorations in Electromagnetic Traction by Rail
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZIntroductory paper on critical explorations in teaching art, science, and teacher educationCavicchi, ElizabethChiu, Son-MeyMcDonnell, Fionahttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1519572023-08-25T03:01:00Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZIntroductory paper on critical explorations in teaching art, science, and teacher education
Cavicchi, Elizabeth; Chiu, Son-Mey; McDonnell, Fiona
The authors of the three papers in this issue discuss and analyze the practice underlying “critical exploration,” a research pedagogy applied in common within their separate art, science, and teacher education classrooms. Eleanor Duckworth developed critical exploration as a method of teaching by involving students so actively and reflectively with a subject that they have “wonderful ideas” that arise from their own questioning. Teachers who encourage critical exploration support their students in encountering complex materials, experiencing confusion, considering multiple possibilities, and constructing new understandings. Teachers refrain from providing answers, or even implying that there is an acceptable answer or technique, and instead facilitate the personal process of development that Jean Piaget, Bärbel Inhelder, and others documented and analyzed. Applying Piaget's findings requires teachers to sustain what David Hawkins described as “triangular relationships” of trust and respect among teacher, learners, and subject matter. The three classroom studies that follow narrate these exploratory qualities in the contexts of middle school girls learning Chinese brush painting, undergraduates investigating mirrors, and teacher education students exploring seeds, pendulums, and the moon. In teaching art and science via critical exploration, curiosity and a sense of beauty reinforce one another, and open a window into the processes of—and connections between—art and science.
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZTeaching about the Nature of Science through Historical ExperimentsHeering, PeterCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1519552023-08-25T03:04:20Z2020-01-01T00:00:00ZTeaching about the Nature of Science through Historical Experiments
Heering, Peter; Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2020-01-01T00:00:00ZA witness account of solar microscope projections: collective acts integrating across personal and historical memoryCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1519542023-08-25T03:07:37Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZA witness account of solar microscope projections: collective acts integrating across personal and historical memory
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
The paper describes the author's witnessing of images projected from an eighteenth-century solar microscope made by John Dollond, now at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Peter Heering facilitated this session as part of his research on the solar microscope. A rectangular mirror, the length of a hand, mounted outside a museum window caught the sunlight and directed it indoors into the microscope's optical tube with its specimen. Astonishing detail was displayed in the resulting image projected onto a screen at human height. Crisply delineated scales patterned the image cast by a historical specimen of a butterfly wing. Observers interacted fluidly with these images in the very dark room. In sharing what we noticed, questioned and conjectured, we contributed to a temporary community. These participant interactions relate to Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's notion that, in the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle used witnessing as a ‘collective act’. Here, the ‘collective act’ spanned participation across history. For example, Robert Hooke's 1665 Micrographia inspired Philip and Phylis Morrison's workshop during my college years and their collaboration with the Eames Office on a film depicting travel through ‘powers of ten’, based on Kees Boeke's 1957 picture book. Personal memories were extended and informed by historical experiences, both for Robert Hooke's subsequent interpreters and for Peter Heering's participants.
2008-01-01T00:00:00ZTime traveling––An intuitive grasp of time takes timeCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1519532023-08-25T03:32:08Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZTime traveling––An intuitive grasp of time takes time
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Seeking to understand the experience of time and instruments of its measure, three students of today traveled in past, present and future in analogy to the Time Traveller of nineteenth century novelist H.G. Wells. Like those long before, they watched natural phenomena, wondered at what they saw, and generated observations and instrumental means for recording happenings in time. Sketching shadows one afternoon, they noticed changes and initiated to mark a pillar’s shadow with chalk. On later autumn days, they marked that pillar’s shadow in another color and discussed what these chalk marks revealed about sun, earth and the seasons. A hollow tube exposed the motion of stars; an astrolabe provided a window into the world of ancient observers; the Greek Antikythera mechanism posed an unsolvable puzzle from the past. Other class activities included examining internal mechanisms of kinetic sculptures, wind-up toys and mechanical clocks; reading fictional and historical accounts; and watching stop-action photography in the early silent films of Georges Méliès. Lego constructions by two school-aged boys propelled students’ imagination into the future. I participated with my students through practicing the research pedagogy of Critical Exploration, proposed by Eleanor Duckworth. The teacher of a critical exploration encourages curiosity and personal exploration by careful observation and reaction to student ideas. By not giving them the answers, but inviting open-ended explorations in which anything can happen or be tried, I encouraged my students in collaboratively developing an intuitive sense of time.
2011-01-01T00:00:00ZShaping and being shaped by environments for learning science: continuities with the space and democratic vision of a century agoCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1519522023-08-25T03:13:08Z2017-01-01T00:00:00ZShaping and being shaped by environments for learning science: continuities with the space and democratic vision of a century ago
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Environments of learning often remain unnoticed and unacknowledged. This study follows a student and myself as we became aware of our local environment at MIT and welcomed that environment as a vibrant contributor to our learning. We met this environment in part through its educational heritage in two centennial anniversaries: John Dewey’s 1916 work Democracy and Education, and MIT’s 1916 move from Boston to the Cambridge campus designed by architect William Welles Bosworth. Dewey argued that for learning to arise through constructive, active engagement among students, the environment must be structured to accommodate investigation. In designing an environment conducive to practical and inventive studies, Bosworth created organic classical forms harboring the illusion of symmetry, while actually departing from it. Students and I are made open to the effects of this environment through the research pedagogy of “critical exploration in the classroom”, which informs my practice of listening and responding, and teaching while researching; it lay fertile grounds for involvement of one student and myself with our environment. Through viewing the moon and sky by eye, telescope, airplane and astrolabe, the student developed as an observer. She became connected with the larger universe, and critical of formalisms that encage mind and space. Applying Euclid’s geometry to the architecture outdoors, the student noticed and questioned classical features in Bosworth’s buildings. By encountering these buildings while accompanied by their current restorer, we came to see means by which their structure and design promote human interaction and environmental sustainability as intrinsic to education. The student responded creatively to Bosworth’s buildings through photography, learning view-camera and darkroom techniques. In Dewey’s view, democracy entails rejecting dualisms endemic in academic culture since the Greek classical era. Dewey regarded experimental science, where learners are investigators, as a means of engaging the world without invoking dualism. Although Dewey’s theory is seldom practiced, our investigations cohered with Deweyan practice. We experienced the environment with its centennial philosophy and architecture as educational agency supportive of investigation that continues to evolve across personal and collective history.
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZReview of "Berlin Electropolis: Shock, Nerves, and German Modernity."Cavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1519512023-08-25T03:46:16Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZReview of "Berlin Electropolis: Shock, Nerves, and German Modernity."
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2008-01-01T00:00:00ZReview of "Thing knowledge: A philosophy of scientific instruments."Cavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1519502023-08-25T03:04:28Z2005-01-01T00:00:00ZReview of "Thing knowledge: A philosophy of scientific instruments."
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2005-01-01T00:00:00ZObserving, Exploring, and Learning in Science and Its HistoryCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1518052023-08-24T03:51:38Z2021-01-01T00:00:00ZObserving, Exploring, and Learning in Science and Its History
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2021-01-01T00:00:00ZIntroducing Investigation into the Teaching and Learning Experiences of New Teachers of ScienceCavicchi, ElizabethHughes-McDonnell, Fionahttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1518042023-08-23T03:04:20Z2001-01-01T00:00:00ZIntroducing Investigation into the Teaching and Learning Experiences of New Teachers of Science
Cavicchi, Elizabeth; Hughes-McDonnell, Fiona
2001-01-01T00:00:00ZHistorical Scientific Instruments in Exploratory Teaching and LearningCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1518032023-08-23T03:30:59Z2021-01-01T00:00:00ZHistorical Scientific Instruments in Exploratory Teaching and Learning
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2021-01-01T00:00:00ZUsing Historical Scientific Instruments in Contemporary Education: Experiences and PerspectivesCavicchi, ElizabethHeering, Peterhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1518022023-08-23T03:39:41Z2021-01-01T00:00:00ZUsing Historical Scientific Instruments in Contemporary Education: Experiences and Perspectives
Cavicchi, Elizabeth; Heering, Peter
2021-01-01T00:00:00ZExploring mirrors, recreating science and history, becoming a class communityCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1518012023-08-23T03:23:28Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZExploring mirrors, recreating science and history, becoming a class community
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
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.
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZCharles Grafton Page's Experiment with a Spiral ConductorCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1518002023-08-23T03:35:13Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZCharles Grafton Page's Experiment with a Spiral Conductor
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
In the 1830s, American experimenter Charles Grafton Page pioneered electromagnetism, developing instruments, experimental practice, and understandings that were foundational for nineteenth-century technologies such as the telegraph and induction coil. While a student, Page detected electricity in a spiral conductor where direct current had not passed and no one expected current to be. He felt bodily shock and saw sparks. This paper explores that experiment through historical accounts and my own reconstruction of it. Page opened up boundaries in the physical circuit and cultural outlook that others treated as closed. New possibilities emerged; by tolerating the ambiguity that accompanied them, Page improvised fluidly and was able to make further discoveries. In recreating his experiment, I encountered variable signals. Like Page, I developed lab techniques that generated unexpected effects and questions. This study shows how opening up physical and cultural boundaries brings to light investigative possibilities not apparent before, possibilities which can become entry points for further exploration.
2008-01-01T00:00:00ZBlind Experimenting in a Sighted World: The Electrical Innovations of Jonathan Nash HearderCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1517992023-08-23T03:30:11Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZBlind Experimenting in a Sighted World: The Electrical Innovations of Jonathan Nash Hearder
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZNineteenth-Century Developments in Coiled Instruments and Experiences with Electromagnetic InductionCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1517982023-08-23T03:07:22Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZNineteenth-Century Developments in Coiled Instruments and Experiences with Electromagnetic Induction
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Faraday demonstrated electromagnetic induction in 1831 using an iron ring wound with two wire coils; on interrupting battery current in one coil, momentary currents arose in the other. Between Faraday’s ring and the induction coil, coiled instruments developed via meandering paths. This paper explores the opening phase of that work in the late 1830s, as the iron core, primary wire coil and secondary wire coil were researched and differentiated. ‘Working knowledge’ (defined by Baird) gained with materials and phenomena was crucial to innovations. To understand these material-based interactions, I experimented with hand-wound coils, along with examining historical texts, drawings and artefacts. My experience recovered the historical dead-end of two-wire coils and ensuing work with long-coiled single conductors initiated by Faraday and Henry. The shock and spark heightened in these coils provided feedback to the many instrumental configurations tested by Page, Callan, Sturgeon, Bachhoffner, and others. The continuous conductor differentiated into two segments soldered together: a thick short wire carrying battery current and a long thin wire for elevating shocks (voltage). The joined wires eventually separated, yet their transitional connection documents belief that the induced effects depend on continuity. These coiled instruments, with their intertwined histories, show experimental work and understandings in the process of developing. Seeing the nonlinear paths by which these instruments developed deepens our understanding of historical experiences, and of how people learn.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZExperiences with the magnetism of conducting loops: Historical instruments, experimental replications, and productive confusionsCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1517972023-08-23T03:56:53Z2003-01-01T00:00:00ZExperiences with the magnetism of conducting loops: Historical instruments, experimental replications, and productive confusions
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2003-01-01T00:00:00ZFaraday and Piaget: Experimenting in relation with the worldCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1517952023-08-23T03:50:26Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZFaraday and Piaget: Experimenting in relation with the world
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2006-01-01T00:00:00Z“The Trust of Spring – for Eleanor” and illustrationsCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1517752023-08-18T03:42:05Z2013-01-01T00:00:00Z“The Trust of Spring – for Eleanor” and illustrations
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2013-01-01T00:00:00ZEffects, Devices and AdventuresCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1517742023-08-18T03:44:50Z2019-01-01T00:00:00ZEffects, Devices and Adventures
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
2019-01-01T00:00:00ZActivity inspired by Medieval Observers with TubeCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1517732023-08-18T03:00:56Z2010-01-01T00:00:00ZActivity inspired by Medieval Observers with Tube
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
For one born to French peasants, Gerbert took advantage of exceptional educational opportunities: monastic training at Aurillac; mathematical studies in Spain; tutoring the Pope and Emperor in Rome. Serving Reims cathedral school for twenty-five years, Gerbert transformed its curriculum and practices; his students disseminated these innovations across Europe. Gerbert’s teaching was research: seeking out unsanctioned, classical texts; analyzing mathematical arguments; observing the sky. His students did what they learned: speaking; observing; making music. He invented instructional instruments: diagrams; an abacus; astronomical spheres. He nurtured relationships of trust among teachers and students. Gerbert’s creativity is a provocative impetus for us to face pedagogic inadequacies and develop responsive teaching that stands the test of time.
2010-01-01T00:00:00ZMetaphors of nature : the vision of Cézanne, Monet, and Poincaré.Cavicchi, Elizabeth Mary.https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1511452025-10-30T18:06:08Z1978-01-01T00:00:00ZMetaphors of nature : the vision of Cézanne, Monet, and Poincaré.
Cavicchi, Elizabeth Mary.
Thesis: B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 1978; Includes bibliographical references.
1978-01-01T00:00:00ZLearning Science as Explorers: Historical Resonances, Inventive Instruments, Evolving CommunityCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1036202022-10-01T23:03:07Z2015-02-01T00:00:00ZLearning Science as Explorers: Historical Resonances, Inventive Instruments, Evolving Community
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Doing science as explorers, students observe, wonder and question the unknown, stretching their experience. To engage students as explorers depends on their safety in expressing uncertainty and taking risks. I create these conditions in my university seminar by employing critical exploration in the classroom, a pedagogy developed by Eleanor Duckworth, based on Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder. My students observe nature and evolve trust in working together. They experience historical resonances through constructing their own diagrams and proofs of Euclid’s geometry and experimenting with motions in response to Galileo’s 1632 Dialogue. Historical figures become virtual members in the classroom, whose historical discourse is treated as if written by a current collaborator. Finding parallels between their thinking and history, students invent such instrumental assists as modeling moonrise through configurations of their bodies, balls and a lamp in the darkroom, which they later test observationally. In the process, their curiosity becomes self-sustaining, instigating further investigation. Drawing on diverse strengths of participants, collaboration among explorers is not like a chain; it can be “as strong as its strongest link.” One person’s insightful confusion can take the whole group’s understanding to a new and different place; an experiment or diagram beginning in one person’s hands soon engages all. Their collaboration has at its disposal the union of life experiences of its members. As students generate multiple concurrent, conflicting perspectives, they diverge from the goal-directed curricula of most schools today. They learn how to observe; how to question; how to communicate; how to determine what is reasonable and what is not; how to create knowledge rather than just accepting it.
2015-02-01T00:00:00ZPeter Heering and Roland Wittje (eds): Learning by Doing: Experiments and Instruments in the History of Science Teaching [book review]Cavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/875582022-09-30T19:05:26Z2012-05-01T00:00:00ZPeter Heering and Roland Wittje (eds): Learning by Doing: Experiments and Instruments in the History of Science Teaching [book review]
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Essays in this volume address how instruments and experimenting were manifested in science teaching in the nineteenth century, with extensions by a half-century earlier or later. Both science and education underwent broad-reaching changes in identity and practice during this era: from interpretive ways of natural philosophy to systematic researches in professionalizing disciplines of sciences; from classical languages and texts read by an elite few to scientific and technical training that were taken up by the burgeoning numbers of those who became students at the beginnings of mass education. Within these large-scale trends, authors of the book’s fourteen papers develop trenchant accounts of the materials of science instruction and the institutional and cultural environments of their use.
2012-05-01T00:00:00ZOpening Possibilities in Experimental Science and its History: Critical Explorations with Pendulums and Singing TubesCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/875572022-10-02T07:33:05Z2008-10-01T00:00:00ZOpening Possibilities in Experimental Science and its History: Critical Explorations with Pendulums and Singing Tubes
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
A teacher and a college student explore experimental science and its history by reading historical texts, and responding with replications and experiments of their own. A curriculum of ever-widening possibilities evolves in their ongoing interactions with each other, history, and such materials as pendulums, flame, and resonant singing tubes. Narratives illustrate how questions, observations, and developments emerge in class interactions, along with the pair’s reflections on history and research. This study applies the research pedagogy of critical exploration, developed by Eleanor Duckworth from the interviewing of Piaget and Inhelder and exploratory activities of the 1960s Elementary Science Study. Complexity as the subject matter opens up possibilities which foster curiosity among participants. Like Galileo, Tyndall, Xu Shou, and others, this student recurrently came upon new physical behaviors. His responses to these phenomena enabled him to learn from yet other unexpected happenings. These explorations have implications for opening up classrooms to unforeseen possibilities for learning.
Teaching . . . is more about a conscientious participation in expanding the space of the possible by creating the conditions for the emergence of the not-yet-imaginable. . . . Teaching, like learning, is not about convergence onto a pre-established truth, but about divergence - about broadening what can be known and done. In other words, the emphasis is not on what is, but what might be brought forth. Teaching thus comes to be a participation in a recursively elaborative process of opening up new spaces of possibility while exploring current spaces. (Davis & Sumara, 2007, p. 64)
2008-10-01T00:00:00ZHistorical Experiments in Students’ Hands: Unfragmenting Science through Action and HistoryCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/870892022-09-28T08:12:48Z2008-08-01T00:00:00ZHistorical Experiments in Students’ Hands: Unfragmenting Science through Action and History
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
Two students, meeting together with a teacher, redid historical experiments. Unlike conventional instruction where science topics and practices often fragment, they experienced interrelatedness among phenomena, participants’ actions, and history. This study narrates actions that fostered an interrelated view. One action involved opening up historical telephones to examine interior circuitry. Another made sound visible in a transparent air column filled with Styrofoam bits and through Lissajous figures produced by reflecting light off orthogonal nineteenth century tuning forks crafted by Koenig and Kohl. Another involved orienting magnetic compasses to reveal the magnetism of conducting wires, historically investigated by Oersted and Schweigger. Replicating Homberg’s triboluminescent compound elicited students’ reflective awareness of history. These actions bore pedagogical value in recovering some of the interrelatedness inherent in the history and reintroducing the wonder of science phenomena to students today.
2008-08-01T00:00:00ZClassroom Explorations: Pendulums, Mirrors, and Galileo’s DramaCavicchi, Elizabethhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/870652022-09-30T14:28:34Z2011-02-01T00:00:00ZClassroom Explorations: Pendulums, Mirrors, and Galileo’s Drama
Cavicchi, Elizabeth
What do you see in a mirror when not looking at yourself? What goes on as a pendulum swings? Undergraduates in a science class supposed that these behaviors were obvious until their explorations exposed questions with no quick answers. While exploring materials, students researched Galileo, his trial, and its aftermath. Galileo came to life both in their presentations about him, and in the context of lab investigations by the emerging class community. Questions and experiments evolved continually; differing perspectives on science and authority were exchanged respectfully. In rediscovering their own capacity for wonder, students developed as critical explorers of the world.
2011-02-01T00:00:00ZArethusa : a fountain through sculptureCavicchi, Elizabeth Maryhttps://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/722272022-01-13T07:54:12Z1980-01-01T00:00:00ZArethusa : a fountain through sculpture
Cavicchi, Elizabeth Mary
The major work for this thesis is the creation of a sculpture, constructed as an independently running fountain. The sculpture is composed of ceramic figures, and is installed at the M.I.T. Student Center Library. The written paper begins with a statement about water and traces the myth of Arethusa, the subject of my fountain sculpture, through references in Greek lyrics. The next section selects Presocratic thought as one basis for ideas about water and continues with discussion of poetic allusions to fountains survey of selected public fountains from several historical periods is undertaken to illustrate the change in sculptural design and purpose of these structures through history. Next the sculptural and environmental aspects of making this thesis fountain are discussed, with accompanying photographs. A brief chapter of my own poetry is included as well.
Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1980.; MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH.; Includes bibliographical references.
1980-01-01T00:00:00Z