Lectures are often thought of in terms of information transfer: students (do not) "get" or "construct meaning of" what physics professors (lecturers) say and the notes they put on the chalkboard (overhead). But this information transfer view does not explain, for example, why students have a clear sense of understanding while they sit in a lecture…

Educators generally are concerned with testing what learners know by means of written tests, as if knowledge was some intrapsychological thing or state that could be translated and externalized into some interpsychologically available inscription that is a more-or-less accurate approximation of what the person knows. In such endeavors, language is…

Uses videotaped lectures and interviews to understand lectures in a physics course for prospective elementary teachers. Reports that the professor staged Aristotle, natural philosophy, and students' observations and intuitive knowledge in opposition to Galileo, controlled experiments, and mathematical inscriptions. Concludes that this form of…