I did Nuffield physics in high school (taught by Sade's uncle, no less!). I hated it (even though I loved physics).
My central problem with it was the centrality of us rediscovering things that we already knew were known. Those of us doing A-level physics weren't living in a bubble - we watched Horizon (BBC science doc series) and other documentaries and we had a good sense of, say, basic Newtonian physics. Yet here we were in school, rolling wooden trucks down wooden slopes with ticker tape trailing behind them so that we could "discover" acceleration and mass etc.
Maybe that worked for some pepple; definitely didn't work for me. I wanted to move on from the "fundamental" discoveries of the past, not recapitulate them.
My central problem with it was the centrality of us rediscovering things that we already knew were known. Those of us doing A-level physics weren't living in a bubble - we watched Horizon (BBC science doc series) and other documentaries and we had a good sense of, say, basic Newtonian physics. Yet here we were in school, rolling wooden trucks down wooden slopes with ticker tape trailing behind them so that we could "discover" acceleration and mass etc.
Maybe that worked for some pepple; definitely didn't work for me. I wanted to move on from the "fundamental" discoveries of the past, not recapitulate them.