{"id":1234,"date":"2017-01-28T02:27:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-28T09:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/?p=1234"},"modified":"2017-01-28T02:27:53","modified_gmt":"2017-01-28T09:27:53","slug":"conceptual-challenges-language-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/2017\/01\/28\/conceptual-challenges-language-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Conceptual Challenges: Language Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have taught Science for 6 years in Canada, but nothing challenged me more than when I came to the United Arab Emirates to teach Science at the Middle School level.\u00a0 In Driver et al.\u2019s book, <em>Children\u2019s Ideas and the Learning of Science, <\/em>it is stated that people construct their own meanings and personal ideas influence the manner in which information is acquired.\u00a0 This is further made difficult if the language in which the Science information is being taught is not the mother tongue of the student.\u00a0 In my case, I sometimes feel like I am doing my students a disservice because so much gets lost in translation.\u00a0 Earlier this year, I was teaching students about plant and animal cells and students were lost because they had no idea what a cell was.\u00a0 I showed them videos and we looked through textbooks, but I knew at the end of the unit that there were still many students that had no clue what I was talking about.\u00a0 They could not fathom that our blood which looks liquid to the naked eye could have red blood cells as a component.<br \/>\nLike Heather and her classmates, my student\u2019s posses so many misconceptions. These stem from information they have \u201cheard\u201d throughout their lives, events that they have observed and even various forms of media.\u00a0 I read<em>, <\/em><em>Exploring the role of a discrepant event in changing the conceptions of evaporation and boiling in elementary school students<\/em>, this paper stated that many causes and solutions to misconceptions among children in elementary school science problems have been proposed; however, in the study, it is suggested that the traditional examples used to enhance student understanding have instead caused misconceptions because of their limited scope.\u00a0 They suggested that to explain abstract scientific concepts, concrete examples are generally presented, but it is difficult to represent all cases, and thus, only typical cases are selected. However, these traditional solutions can contribute to the students\u2019 difficulties in learning.\u00a0 This may ne an answer to reducing misconceptions in the science classroom.<\/p>\n<p>Driver, R., Guesne, E., &amp; Tiberghien, A. (1985).\u00a0<em>Children&#8217;s ideas in science<\/em>. Milton Keynes [Buckinghamshire];Philadelphia;: Open University Press.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Paik, S., &amp; Paik, S. (2015). Chemistry education research and practice: Exploring the role of a discrepant event in changing the conceptions of evaporation and boiling in elementary school students Department of Chemistry, University of Ioannina. doi:10.1039\/c5rp00068h<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have taught Science for 6 years in Canada, but nothing challenged me more than when I came to the United Arab Emirates to teach Science at the Middle School level.\u00a0 In Driver et al.\u2019s book, Children\u2019s Ideas and the Learning of Science, it is stated that people construct their own meanings and personal ideas [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1669382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-conceptual-challenges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1235,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions\/1235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}