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wasting time
getting used to converting between units.
Pick one.
I’ll have you know converting out of slugs was absolutely a waste of time. My prof searing 2.54cm/in into my brain was quite useful though
If your goal is to teach new material, you teach that material specifically. You dont mix other things into it because 1) it makes it harder for them to learn that new material and 2) it makes it harder for you to figure out what they dont understand.
That is actually not backed by science. Mixing material is a lot more effective than focusing on one thing.
Especially when teaching chemistry
This is not true. I literally have to fix conceptual issues that students have because people do this to them.
[Citation needed]
I have tutored thousands of students. You are going to need to back what you say with relevant evidence.
The only thing I quickly found is this paper, which says that learning multiple things is not better nor worse than one thing at a time, but it also states in the abstract that cognitive psychologists believed up to that point that mixing multiple topics is beneficial.
That paper isnt dealing with the same issue that I am talking about. Learning chinese isn't going to compromise someones' ability to understand physics. (Unless the problem is written in chinese I guess) But being weak on unit conversion will absolutely compromise their capability to learn a concept where the first problems they are meant to solve are written in a way that requires unit conversions.
In my experience tutoring thousands of students, one of the most common scenarios that I see is that a student struggled in an area like that, was taught in a way that relies on that weak skill to learn the new skill when that was not necessary and then struggled with the new skill as a result. Thats the sort of scenario that this thread is about. Mixing in concepts unnecessary to understanding into a problem thus overcomplicating it before the student has a solid grasp of the concept. That does make it harder for them to learn and its something bad teachers do.