The idea of the human mind as originally an empty vessel or a blank slate has a long history dating back at least to Aristotle. Over the years, this notion has been argued and debated by many learning theorists, for instance Dewey believed that two essential components in education are the experience of the learner and critical inquiry (Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. F. 1960). In the video Private Universe, Heather’s errors and misconceptions occured because she has the wrong or inappropriate generalization of Space Science. Driver et al.,1985 argues “experienced teachers [need to] realize that students do have their own ideas about phenomena, even if at times these ‘ideas’ may seem incoherent at from the teacher’s point of view” (p.2). There is no doubt that Heather’s misunderstanding or interpretation came from another source which made an impact on her learning.
According to Cordova, J. R. et al.,2014 there are several affective and motivational variables that may lead to misconceptions.
Confidence prior knowledge– “refers to a retrospective judgment of whether one’s current understanding of the topic is correct” (Cordova, J. R. et al., 2014, p. 165)
Self-efficacy-”prospective judgment of one’s capabilities to learn about a specific topic” (Cordova, J. R. et al., 2014, p. 165)
Interest– Situational interest is a short-term form of interest generally facilitated by something in a person’s environment. Individual interest- internal, and long-term form of interest that is less dependent on an environmental cue being present (Hidi, 1990).
Role of learner characteristics– With respect to gender differences does account for a difference in learner conceptual understanding.
Knowing that students enter the classroom with the conceptual understanding of a topic, as educators, it is important that we tap into those understandings to reveal an inconsistency. Vosniadou, S., & Brewer, W. F. (1992) researchers did an excellent job of investigating students knowledge about the shape of the earth. Unlike Heather’s teacher, these researchers considered asking questions about the topic before explicitly teaching the lesson. The following are teaching techniques to retrieve pre-conceptual understanding.
Concept Inventories
Concept inventories are multiple choice or short answer tests that target fundamental concepts within a domain.
Concept maps
Concept map activities can reveal the underlying structure or organization of students knowledge of a concept or constellation of concepts. These are very helpful when the kinds of causal theories and relations among ideas are critical to them understanding the course materials.
Self-Assessment Probes
Self-assessment probes are indirect methods of assessment that ask students to reflect and comment on their level of knowledge and skill across a range of items.
References:
Cordova, J. R., Sinatra, G. M., Jones, S. H., Taasoobshirazi, G., & Lombardi, D. (2014). Confidence in prior knowledge, self-efficacy, interest and prior knowledge: Influences on conceptual change. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 39(2), 164-174.
Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. F. (1960). Knowing and the known(No. 111). Boston: Beacon Press.
Driver, R., Guesne, E., & Tiberghien, A. (1985). Children’s ideas and the learning of science. Children’s ideas in science, 1-9.
Hidi, S. (1990). Interest and its contribution as a mental resource for learning. Review of Educational Research, 60(4), 549–571.
Vosniadou, S., & Brewer, W. F. (1992). Mental models of the earth: A study of conceptual change in childhood. Cognitive psychology, 24(4), 535-585.Available in the course readings library.
Hi Mary,
I totally agree with your assessment of how misconceptions arise and that students never enter a learning situation without some prior knowledge that influences how they conceptualise information presented to them. One of the sources of misconceptions I have seen in my students is information that was passed on to them by a prior teacher or someone who they believe to be an authority on the subject matter. In some cases it is not a matter of them being provided with “wrong information” but it was that the authority figure was unaware of the wrong interpretation and so the student went away. The misconceptions that arise from this source tend to be the hardest to overcome because their confidence in the source has made the misconception such a rooted part of their conceptual understanding.
In my experience, we tend to focus our teaching strategies in a manner that does not necessarily consider, in a meaningful way, the conceptual framework with which students enter the classroom. More emphasis needs to be placed on helping teachers to use some of the tools you have suggested in trying. I am particularly fond of conceptual maps because they really do help in identifying where along the conceptual framework the problem is and thus making it much easier to resolve the misconception.
Kamille,
I loved your replied and it brought up another point I noticed in my teaching practice. In the last few years, I have noticed students have this fear of being ?wrong? and they are more reluctant to be forthcoming with their thought process. Even though I celebrate and encourage unique hypothesis/predictions of a question and let the learner that making mistakes is a GOOD THING!! Constructivist learning is when students construct their own ideas rather than absorbing from others. For this reason, the teacher?s role is to provide students a learning environment where misconceptions are not criticized or ridiculed. Ultimately, students will feel safe to explore and express their meaning-making and misconceptions are addressed by their peers or their teachers.
I love your mention of the possible use of a concept map. I think what is incredibly powerful about these visuals is that they explicitly make the thinking visible to both the teacher and the students. When we can engage in metacognition with students and show them how to be mindful of what they know, how they know, and why. We are serving them with reflective learning life skills that will last throughout their educational careers. Mind maps also serve not only to make thinking visible prior to commencing a unit of study as a way to address current level of understanding along with identifying misconceptions, but they can continued to be added to and constructed during the remainder of the course as a way to capture new learning as well. I love using mind maps as a strategy and simple colour coding helps us to categorize what we are constructing. Using Google Drawings has served very helpful to create these maps.
http://www.mindmapping.com/ This site has great resources for mind maps
Trish