SCIED 552: Science Teaching and Learning Developing Models of Science Teaching

I found this week’s reading about cognitive apprenticeship and the situated nature of learning really interesting. When I do these readings I always try to think about the ways that I believe I learn best and see if they are in line with the focal learning/teaching theory of the reading. Throughout this reading, there were many times I read something and was just agreeing in my head like, “mmhmm, mmhmm. I experienced that.” For example, I always hated studying vocabulary in high school. We would open the vocab books each Monday and copy the 10-20 vocab words into our journal and then go to the sentences page and fill in the blanks with the vocab words. Come Friday, I would memorize the words out of the book quickly and forget the words as soon as I turned the test in. I think I learned very few words through this method but I know learn knew words frequently through interactions, especially professional interactions. Even last week in this class, we used words like cognitive conflict, equilibration, conceptual ecology, and incommensurability. I just listed those four words off the top of my head and am confident that I could use them correctly because they were all words that we defined in our group and then used in our models of conceptual change. Using the words in this specific context helped me learn them. This week at the middle school Scott used the word incommensurable and I thought to myself, “oooo, I know what that means!” I guarantee if my high school English teacher used one of our vocab words the next week I would not know what she was talking about and there’s a good chance I would not have even noticed she used the word. Basically, that was a really long way of saying that I agree that what is learned should not be separate from how it is learned (i.e. it is important to learn things in close to the same context to which you would use the learned thing).

Another part of the reading the really stood out to me was the phrase, “it is quite possible to acquire a tool but be unable to use it.” This made me think of classes where you “plug and chug.” I picture classes where I was given formulas and was able to solve a problem using the formula but I never really understood why I was doing what I was doing. Therefore, if I would have run into the same problem in an “authentic” situation as the reading calls it, I would not be able to solve the problem because I likely forgot the formula or wouldn’t even recognize to apply it. This helps me understand why AST and the teachers at the middle school really push students to come up with their own terms and solutions and really understand those before introducing the technical terms and formulas. This practice was summarized in the reading as, “instruction gradually introduces students to the standard algorithm, now that such an algorithm has a meaning and a purpose in their community.”

This leaves me racking my brain for ways that I can bring “authentic” situations into my future classroom.

To be honest, as much as I enjoyed learning about both Kuhn’s and Lakatos’ ideologies of conceptual change, I feel as though I favor the way Lakatos discusses the framework as well as his terminology. Deeming a students’ central commitments as “theoretical hardcore” (Posner, Pg.212) that leads to specified “research programs” helps me visualize the process that students undergo when traversing a conceptual change. His claim that these research programs are neither confirmed nor refuted also allows me to buy into his version, being that we are told from a very early point as science educators that technically no science can be completely proven. It’s this statement’s fluidity that helps me buy into the conceptual change framework. Rather than Khun’s view that “normal science” is punctuated by short revolutions (Disessa Handbook, pg.268), I feel as if students’ prior knowledge is always ebbing and flowing with the information that they are subjected to. Stating that normal science is punctuated with rapid periods of growth makes me feel as if there are only very specific moments in which students will question whether they should progress through conceptual change. I hold the belief that when students are presented with any new knowledge (scholastic or otherwise), there are always small reorganizations occurring within their conceptual ecology.

I feel as if this constant idea of reorganization can be supported by Piaget’s view of equilibration. As an influx of new ideas is accepted, the scale is tipped to no longer favor students’ prior knowledge (Disessa Handbook, pg.267). In my eyes, Piaget’s process is never going to lead to a perfectly balanced seesaw. Students are always going to be adding or removing weights that fuel the imbalance. If this is the case, then it seems safe to say that students need to be supported in their balancing act, as suggested in both papers. Being that it is ultimately the students who must buy into a conceptual change, it then falls onto me (the teacher) to help students discover which information warrants a conceptual change. I really appreciate how the texts suggested that one of the best things teachers can do to support students was to provide them with challenges that question their prior knowledge and allow for conceptual shifts to occur. This resonates with me, as the AST framework seems to really focus on this method of encouraging student-driven inquiry to uncover their own knowledge.

Overall, I feel as if the readings this week really helped me to understand the AST framework that my science educator cohort has been diving into. By supporting our students’ own internal conflicts, the connections between concepts (beliefs) can become even stronger.

The idea put forth in the “misconception” theory and the “theory” theory that the way children’s understandings of science develop parallels similar conceptual developments in the history of science is fascinating (diSessa, 2006, pg. 271).  It reminds me of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” which I always thought would be interesting if it were true.  I would love to know if there are other examples of this parallel, besides those of heat and temperature.  On a personal note, my 6^th grade teacher told me (repeatedly!) that heat and cold were the same thing, but I didn’t have a particle-energy model of heat at the time and it nagged at me for years.  The concept that hot water can sometimes freeze more quickly than cold water (the Mpemba effect) evaded my understanding until I found myself talking to a Best Buy associate in a Best Buy near Vancouver, Canada who happened to be getting his master’s in Physics.  Knowledge is everywhere.  In both cases, I had a naïve conceptualization or explanation of the phenomena, until skilled scientist-educators used an “adversary” approach (Posner, et al., 1992, pg. 226) combined with using my “intuitive ideas as resources” (Minstrell, 1982 in diSessa, 2006, pg. 273) to guide and push me and my understanding.

I’m very interested in how to effectively address student misconceptions about controversial issues, especially those for which there is a gulf between what is known scientifically and what many Americans believe to be true.  For example, 98% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing an increased rate of climate change, but only 57% of the American public believe humans are the cause (Sinatra & Hofer, 2021).  Science denialism of this type is found on topics including the efficacy of vaccines, the shape of the Earth, evolution, relativity theory, tobacco-related disease, the origin of life, and AIDS.

As a scientist, science teacher, and an American, I find science denialism alarming.  Being able to address misconceptions like these feels critical to our survival as a species.  Countering climate change misconceptions of students by “throwing more facts” at them can be counterproductive and cause further entrenchment in their beliefs—a situation known as the “backfire effect” (Fackler, 2021).  AST urges us to consider the prior knowledge and experiences of students as resources in the classroom; diSessa (2006, pg. 276) suggests a similar strategy: “Interventions that merely teach teachers about naïve ideas have been surprisingly successful.”   Based on diSessa (2006) and Posner, et al. (1992), to effectively counter science denialism and to bring about conceptual change in students, it seems key to work with students’ naïve conceptions and to present anomalies incongruent with those conceptions that lead to accommodation of new concepts.

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.

Reading Posner’s article was actually really interesting. I found myself grappling with his idea of accommodation and the four conditions that need to be fulfilled in order for an accommodation to occur. The first condition, “there must be dissatisfaction with existing conceptions” (Posner et al., 1982) made a lot of sense to me. I always wondered why people insisted on holding onto misconceptions (albeit typically unconsciously) that have flaws that are clear to me. However, the flaws are obviously not clear to them and that must be why they hold on to their misconceptions. This makes sense why Posner would suggest in order for a new concept to be taken up any old misconceptions need to have holes poked in them. I feel like this aligns with what we have learned in AST about paying attention to students’ prior knowledge.

However, when I read the Cambridge handbook chapter one of the negative contributions of the misconception movement that they mentioned was item 1 of Posner’s framework (the quote I posted above). diSessa said that it “led to a preemptive dominance for theory theory points of view and “conflict” models of instruction” (diSessa, 2006). Overall, when I read the Posner article I thought that it made a lot of sense but after reading the review chapter I realized that I must be overlooking some of the issues in Posner’s thinking and most likely holding onto my own misconceptions. I am going to look more into theory theory and “conflict” models of instruction because this will likely help clear some stuff up for me. Hopefully, you guys can help me work through this as well.

Another related quick note, the handbook chapter said that Posner had stated multiple times that his work was epistemological and his framework was not meant for instructional purposes. So, I understand that his work was focused on knowledge acquisition and how people learn but I guess I don’t understand why that cannot be extrapolated to instruction. If you have a framework for how people learn, then why can’t you create a framework for instruction from it?

I don’t know. Clearly, I have a lot of things to work through this week.

I found the Posner reading this week incredibly interesting – especially as it applies to how the general public feels and interacts with scientific findings. What stood out most to me was how this reading suggested people accept new concepts, and accommodate them. In particular, how they will realize that their currently held beliefs do not necessarily match new information as in this passage from page 221:

“This analysis suggests that the presentation of anomalies will produce dissatisfaction with an existing conception only if: 1) Students understand why the experimental finding represents an anomaly; 2) Students believe that it is necessary to reconcile the findings with their existing conceptions; 3) Students are committed to the reduction of inconsistencies among the beliefs they hold; and 4) Attempts to assimilate the findings into the students’ existing conceptions are seen not to work.”

This list seems insurmountable to me both for the general public and for students. For example, if we take the timely example of whether or not the COVID-19 vaccine works and is safe, it’s been shown that a large portion of the populations can’t get past point 2 here e.g. that studies show the vaccine is both safe and effective which doesn’t vibe with their previous ideas on vaccines, so it must be reconciled.

Generally, I believe this to be the biggest sticking point for most people when trying to ‘accommodate’ any new idea. In the face of new information, it feels like most people knee-jerk response is to become defensive and simply dismiss the new information as incorrect without even attempting to investigate the new claim any further. So how does that fit into this framework? Does motivation play a role here?

This week, I also read the Cambridge Handbook chapter and have to admit that I think a lot of it went over my head. They introduced a lot of terminology a little too quickly for me and it made it difficult to follow. That said, it seems like the fragmentation side of the line is most similar to the one that my group came up with on the first day. That students have a bunch of both pre-conceived ideas and new ones introduced in class that we as teachers help connect, so it becomes less of a jumble and more of a web. So its interesting to me that they suggested that the opposite belief was the dominant one!

-Rachael