During my time teaching chemistry and physics, I found that one of the most challenging aspects of fostering learning was helping students come to terms with previous ideas, knowledge, and academic learning that did not match the current understanding(s), at least at a high school/entry college level, of phenomena in each subject. Ideas that they had held for a long time or that they had been taught in earlier grades (simplifications of the theories we were working on) were hard to dislodge, so I see why conceptual change theory could occupy a prominent seat in science education research.
Confronting misconceptions was an important aspect of the process, but I found that I could create situations for students to confront those ideas but that didn’t dislodge the idea. Posner et al (1982) comment, “Our central commitment in this study is that learning is a rational activity.” My experience in the classroom, and Kuhn’s analysis of the nature of scientific communities, would argue that learning is not rational. There are parts of the process that are rational, but when confronting deeply held beliefs or abstract, hard to observe concepts a different aspect of human psyche takes over.
Posner et al’s description of the process required for central concepts to gain acceptance by a student, the features of a conceptual ecology, and the intersection of these two ideas provide a way to conceptualize how to change a student’s understanding of a scientific core concept. The interviews they conducted showed students at different levels of assimilation of special relativity, which can be a hard concept for students to grasp.
diSessa provides a history of the development of the field of conceptual change research. Interestingly, her discussion of “coherence” and “knowledge as fragments” approaches to change theory struck me as important distinctions when thinking about how to frame student learning and prior knowledge.
I was introduced to the “misconception” approach early in my teaching career. It was obvious that students needed to be conscious of inaccurate conceptions that they had in order to avoid the situation where they “learned” something but did not allow that learning to effect prior knowledge or knowledge that resided in boxes outside of “chemistry class” or “physics class.” I also found that pre-tests and direct confrontation of those ideas were disheartening because they were personal to students (learning is not rational). I found, through trial, error, adn discussion that focusing on what they knew and helping them find more accurate ways of understanding worked much better then direct confrontation, so the “knowledge as fragments” approach described here makes a lot of sense to me.
While I am sure we will get there eventually, I actually moved to a modeling approach and then to the ISLE approach of teaching physics. Looking back at the philosophy of ISLE, I see that it specifically confronts traditional conceptual change approaches to physics. One of the reasons for its different approach is the non-rational, extremely personal way students respond to corrections in their understandings of physical phenomena that can inhibit the ability to really think about physics.
On a different note, I have a question about whether or not researchers are seeing a change in students’ prior knowledge/theory building as we move to a more virtual world. I found that as teenagers pushed learning to drive until later, the ideas of acceleration and constant velocity were more not as clear as when students had already learned to drive when they took physics. Similarly, I found that they did not have direct experience with many phenomena and were skeptical of videos of phenomena because they know how to doctor videos.
Beth,
The ISLE approach is also what I was taught to use in when learning science education in college and it was always interesting to me because it very simply seemed to just be the basic scientific method that they teach us in grade school. It seemed like a no-brainer to me that having students participate in the scientific method was the most effective way of teaching science and I’m curious as to why/how that isn’t the norm. However, having had to teach a few lessons to high schoolers this way, I can also understand how something like that is difficult to standardize since students generally move at their own pace through this process, so I’m curious to hear from you how you’ve implemented it effectively.
I am also curious about the move to virtual. After having TA’d a lab class for intro to phys at PSU, I can definitely say that students came away with much less than they did in person, but I am not sure how much of that was just not interacting personally with lab carts, velocity sensors, etc and how much of that was disbelief in virtual results.
Beth,
I think the ISLE approach is an interesting take on dislodging misconceptions. I haven’t used it myself, but its focus on empowering students to be co-creators of their own knowledge and understanding is something that I have found to be powerful in my own teaching.
I haven’t experienced students questioning the veracity of video recorded phenomena–perhaps because my students were younger than yours? In fact, their long-running favorite science video is of Brian Cox visiting the “world’s largest vacuum” to drop a bunch of feathers and a bowling ball. Rather than causing them to cling to incorrect beliefs, they usually puzzle through it as a group and come to a consensus on how it works.
I think you’re onto something when you suggest that the most difficult conceptions to shift are “deeply held beliefs or abstract, hard to observe concepts.” It makes me wonder what research has been done into classifying these beliefs and concepts and ways of aiding accommodation.