(Disclaimer: It’s been a long time since I’ve taught Science and an even longer time since I’ve taught Math so I found this activity challenging because I don’t really have anything to comment on that is relevant to my personal practice. I tried to read the course article about Children’s Conceptions of Heat and Temperature because I remember teaching a unit in Grade 7 related to that but the UBC link is broken and I couldn’t find the article online that didn’t cost money to read. I read an article that referenced Erickson’s work however, Children’s Ideas About Hot and Cold (Appleton, 1984). The last Science I’ve taught has been to Grades 1-3 students and I really wanted to read Children’s Understandings of Science: Goldilocks and the Three Bears Revisited (McClelland & Krockover, 1996) which studied first grade students and their understanding of heat, and compare these ideas, but again there was no access available).
From McClelland & Krockover’s abstract and introduction, however, I have found that many of the peculiarities of children’s understandings are echoed in the video and the other readings. McClelland & Krockover (1996) found that students adopted misconceptions of scientific conceptions based on their exposure to literature, in this case the fairytale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This is consistent with the findings of others in this week’s readings that children are prone to make contradictory statements about the nature of scientific phenomenon when that phenomenon is presented in a different way, for example temperature descriptions and changes described qualitatively rather than quantitatively (Appleton, 1984).
Researchers also found that children often rely on sensory input even when it has been proven to be unreliable, as when a cold hand registers cool water as quite hot despite the actual temperature but they may choose to “live with the contradiction” rather than challenge their personally held conception (Appleton, 1984). This reminded me of Vygotsky’s ZPD and of Piaget’s understanding of the symbiotic dance of learner-teacher in a child’s schema-construction rather than the “tabula rasa” Shapiro (1988) references which had been the guiding pedagogy of 1960s-80s. McClelland & Krockover (1996) supported Piaget and Vygotsky’s worldview’s when they found that the first graders were able to change their conceptions when presented with activities that put the contradiction to their previous beliefs. This is similar to what Heather was able to do in the video when she reassessed what she believed to be the shape of the Earth’s orbit and what Mark (Shapiro, 1988) was able to do when he connected previous lessons to the reflection of light from objects into our eyes, revising his prior hypothesis recorded before the unit began.
All the researchers I read made a strong case for the use of constructivist and constructionist practices in the Science classroom. Shapiro (1988) did this when she pointed out the value placed on both hands-on and self-directed “experiments” by her research subjects; Appleton (1984) did this when he commented on the value of using relevant, accessible situations rather than abstract examples or those that were beyond the children’s experience; and McClelland & Krockover (1996) directly identified the present view “that learning is the result of the interaction between what children are taught or what they experience, and their current ideas or conceptions (Driver, 1981)” (p.33) and targeted constructivist concepts of prior knowledge and social interaction as active meaning-makers in children’s understanding of scientific concepts. All of this points to the necessity, in my opinion, of rethinking the amount of information teachers are expected to “cover” in each science unit. A better alternative is a streamlined curriculum focusing on the topics that most children hold misconceptions in for each strand of scientific thought so that teachers can actively and deliberately tailor learning in a pattern of (1) misconception-identification, (2) contradiction-exposure, and (3) independent-and-guided exploration in order to construct more accurate understandings.
References
Appleton, K. (1984). Children’s Ideas About Hot and Cold. Learning About Science Project (Primary). Working Paper No. 127. Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED252407.pdf
McClelland, A.K. & Krockover, G.H. (1996) Children’s understandings of science: Goldilocks and the Three Bears revisited. J Elem Sci Edu (8)32. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173747 Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF03173747?LI=true
Shapiro, B (1988). What children bring to light: Towards Understanding What the Primary School Science Learner Is Trying to Do Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED309081.pdf
Hi Jan.
I found it interesting how you linked learners’ tenacity for misconceptions to Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. Perhaps you are suggesting that learners create misconceptions because there brains aren’t ready to handle the scientific explanation. I also wonder how many common misconceptions are a result of learners interpreting the world around them without a satisfactory explanation (and so they make one) or are due to the use of simple analogies at younger ages that stick perhaps too well. Posner et al. (1982) distinguished between assimilation (making to fit with current understandings) and accommodation (need to reorder current understandings), and Shapiro (1988) introduces a case study where one student quickly grasped the concept of light refraction in water, while the others did not, despite attempts to explain it to them, which seems to fit with Vygotsky.
? Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W. and Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Sci. Ed., 66: 211?227. doi: 10.1002/sce.373066020.
? Shapiro, B. L. (1988). What children bring to light: Towards understanding what the primary school science learner is trying to do. Developments and dilemmas in science education, 96-120.