Conceptual Change.
Posners paper on analyzing conceptual change in scientific phenomenon covered many aspects of the topic (Much of which I would have not considered myself). One portion of the paper that caught my attention was the mention of how important analogies are in conceptual understanding. This makes me wonder if posners work had any baring on the SATs content much of which was heavily focused on understanding analogies.
The Cambridge handbook also had a lot of interesting things to say about conceptual change in sciences. One parallel between the two readings that I noticed was this essence of politics in these methods of teaching. In posners article he uses phrases like ‘In order for a student to consider an alternative conception he must find it intelligible”. And the cambridge handbook talks about how some science theories seem to be hard to add concepts onto because they came about in times of a scientific revolution and have been politicized and the collective view of the theory is like a fond tale of the past that is seemingly impossible to let go of.
This is what I got out of these articles but I may be misunderstanding some of the points. I am eager to get into class and make this teaching method more clear.
Brett,
Similarly to Grace, I think analogies can play a big role in the undertaking of conceptual changes as well as underpinning students’ conceptual ecologies. I feel as though the level of understanding the student would need to form a strong analogy would be a testament to their understanding, thus proving why the SAT loves to use analogies haha. I feel as though these analogies could be put to good use by educators to probe their students’ prior knowledge/concepts. Providing students with an analogy could act as a challenging event that would drive students to concept change. I like the idea that you emphasized politics in the readings, but I would like to know more about how you interpret that. When I read the quotes, I don’t necessarily see politics, so I’d love to hear more from you!
Hi Brett,
In my response, I discussed the need to understand students’ prior knowledge so that we could overcome any misconceptions. You eluded to misconceptions a little in your statement, “fond tale of the past that is seemingly impossible to let go of” which I think is a really interesting way to think about it. However, you focused mainly on a different part of the Posner reading but a part that is still related to prior knowledge: analogies. I think the reason that analogies are important is because it is a tool that people can use to relate something they understand to something they do understand. It helps people put something foreign into terms they are familiar with. This helps people organize thoughts and make sense of them, trending toward a conceptual change. I had never thought about why we learned about analogies, or why they are a focus of the SAT, but I suppose it would not be a large jump to assume that it has something to do with prior research on the importance of analogies for conceptual change. I look forward to discussing this theory more this week in class.