Category Archives: A. Conceptual Challenges

I was bad at Chemistry

One might assume that, because my background in a B.Sc. in Math and Physics, I had a strong grasp of chemistry. After all, Physics and Chemistry are quite brotherly subjects. Well, I did not. While concepts in Physics made “sense” to me from day one – after all, I felt I was living in a “physical” world, and the concepts covered often referenced things I was familiar with through day-to-day experience – a deeper understanding of Chemistry eluded me for many years. To be clear, I struggled with chemistry up until my final few months of high school.

Specifically, I just could not “get” particle models of matter. I couldn’t accept, intuitively, that atoms and particles were/are real things. I couldn’t understand how we knew what they look like, how they move, any of it. I didn’t understand how tests could be done on them, I didn’t understand how we could see them and I didn’t understand how the objects I used in day-to-day life, like a pencil, could be made up of these mysterious particles like “hydrogen” and “carbon”. It all just seemed imaginary. Reflecting back on it all now, I attribute much of this frustrating mental block to the following:

1. never having a passionate teacher who took the time to thoroughly explain the concepts. (like Heather, I felt I was being given information to know, not explanations to understand)

2. my younger self took a long time to understand the purpose of a lab, and we had limited equipment. (other kids always took the lead and basically did the labs for me, or we were forced to watch the instructor do the labs)

3. Through almost my entire time with K-12 chemistry I probably only saw two videos about chemistry. (even then the animations and CGI were so bad that it all just seemed like hocus pocus; I couldn’t tell what actually existed and what was an artist’s interpretation)

Even after being told what I was supposed to know, I was always left with the question “yes, OK. But… what really happens?”

I had a persistent mental block; an elaborate private universe, containing a world of misconceptions.

With this in mind, I understand Heather’s situation. Being “bright” didn’t seem to affect the severity of her private misconceptions. I noted the following challenges throughout the video:

• Heather does not believe the Earth goes in a circle, and instead believes it goes in a very unusual pattern.

• She believes that indirect beams of light/energy from the sun cause summer, while direct beams cause winter. She says “it doesn’t go in a straight line”.

I still don’t quite know what she is getting at here.

• She believes that “rays from the sun come around the Earth and illuminate that part of the moon because of the Earth’s shadow”, which is her explanation for the crescent moon.

This is a super common misconception but is flat-out wrong.

• She knows that she had to learn the phases of the moon, but couldn’t remember if she was taught where the moon was for the phases.

Many students will have similar stories from their own education.

Disconnected

Clearly there is a disconnect here between what the teacher has discussed in class and what Heather believes. It’s hard to tell from the video, but it’s quite likely that there was not enough time spend on gauging prior knowledge and focused unearthing of student misconceptions prior to teaching the topic. The teacher started the teaching already assuming the students had some basic, shared knowledge. Clearly, that was a mistake. Perhaps if private Universe had been filmed in 2018, the teacher would have leveraged some digital tech such as PhET to teach the phases, and/or had students explain their personal theories individually and/or in groups using these tools prior to beginning instruction.

A Digital Solution

Speaking of digital technology, and circling back to my initial thoughts on particle models, I found research that suggests many preschoolers, elementary, and middle school students all have (incorrect) intuitions about the existence of “invisible particles” in contexts such as dissolving matter (Samarapungavan, Bryan, & Wills, 2017, p. 1016). What was interesting is that when interactive game contexts were used for understanding simple molecular models, children as low as kindergarten show success using them to explain heat and temperature phenomena (Samarapungavan, Bryan, & Wills, 2017, p. 1016). Maybe if I had these tools contexts growing up I’d have bucked my misconceptions much earlier.

Darkness Rises … and Light to Meet It

There’s another interesting point I encountered in my research which helps explain Heather’s case. The researchers found that, especially in regard to light and shadows, suggest that “it is important to continually attend to and systematically address students’ concepts of materiality in the context of ongoing physical science instruction across grade band topics with a variety of phenomena” (Samarapungavan, Bryan, & Wills, 2017, p. 1017). It is likely that Heather formed this misconception much earlier than the filming date, and carried these ideas with her year after year, unquestioned. Is this her fault? No, not really. Perhaps it was the fault of the teachers, or the system, for failing to “continually and systematically address” the concepts.

I truly feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of this topic, and I’m truly looking forward to both the comments on my post as well as reading and commenting on yours!

All the best,

Scott

After watching the Private Universe video and completing a few readings off the list it became clear that a learner’s conceptions about a topic are vitally important in order for their knowledge to expand. What stuck with me from the video was that the teacher was not aware of the different conceptions students came to the lesson with. It reminded me that, as educators, taking time to explore students’ existing knowledge and beliefs before the lesson occurs always helps to guide teaching plans and practice. Further, I found it very interesting that Heather thought the Earth’s orbit was in a figure eight because of a diagram of something different she saw in her textbook. This reiterated the point that some images stick with kids and, unless they have another image or hands-on experience to counteract the initial conceptions, they will find this difficult.

Having taught upper elementary grades for the past six years I often find the concept of decimals to be difficult for children to understand. To have a sound understanding of decimals they must have strong foundations with place value, whole number and fractions. Further, there are several common misconceptions relating to decimals that, in my personal experience, can prove difficult to shake. For example, some students believe decimals to be like fractions – for example, 4/5 = 0.45. Students can also develop the misconception that longer numbers are larger. In their work on understanding decimals, Kevin Moloney and Kaye Stacey argue that even students in high school are completing decimal calculations without understanding the comparative sizes of the numbers involved (Moloney & Stacey, 2016, p. 46). In her work on tracking decimal misconceptions, Linda Griffin discusses the powerful learning opportunities that come from incomplete understanding but also cautions how they can impede future learning if not explored and discussed (Griffen, 2016, p. 489).

As a teacher I enjoy exploring the misconceptions relating to decimals by using hands-on tools like Cuisenaire rods and number lines. However, just like Heather couldn’t leave her own conceptions in the video, children often will go back to saying something like, “This number is larger because it has more numbers after the point,” which can be very frustrating!

In her work analyzing children’s understanding of light, Bonnie Shapiro notes that many children held the same ideas about the nature of light before the lesson was taught and that only some changed their ideas after the lesson (Shapiro, 1988, p. 100). This was a common theme in the readings this week and really made me think – how do we change conceptions?

Could meaningful use of educational technology help my upper elementary students to gain greater insight into, and understanding of, decimal numbers? One app that I’ve used on the iPads before is Explain Everything. The app allows the children to make a video using different effects explaining a topic. I’ve used it when teaching about the Tudors in History but not thought to use it when teaching Math. This week’s readings about misconceptions and misunderstandings in STEM subjects has made me revisit this idea. For example, the children could produce a video about decimals that would allow them to demonstrate and explain their existing understanding and conceptions for me to watch before we start our work; this could help me improve my planning for the unit and to more effectively tailor the lesson plans, discussion and the challenges set.

References

Griffin, L. B., (2016). Tracking Decimal Misconceptions: Strategic Instructional Choices. Teaching Children Mathematics, 22(8), 488-494.

Moloney, K. & Kaye, S. (2016). Understanding decimals. Australian Mathematics Teacher, 72(3). 46-49.

Shapiro, B. L., (1988). What children bring to light: Towards understanding what the primary school science learner is trying to do. In P. Fensham (Ed.), Development and dilemmas in science education. London: The Falmer Press.

In the video A Private Universe, we are introduced to a young student Heather, who is considered by her classroom teacher to be very bright, above other students, ranked 9 out of 10 on a scale, and expected to know the answer to the questions asked.  Heather’s teacher was surprised and mentioned that she “assumed they (students) already have the basics”. Driver, Guesne & Tiberghien (1985), mention how students have stable ideas and “students have not modified their ideas in spite of attempts by a teacher to challenge them by offering counter-evidence” (p. 3). Similarly, Burgoon, Heddle & Duran (2011), mention that “students tend to cling to their own conceptions even after experiencing events that directly challenge those conceptions” (pg. 102). This was seen in the video. To help correct Heather’s misconceptions, the classroom teacher gives direct instruction to target the areas of need. Even after direct teaching, Heather still has difficulty understanding direct and indirect light and held on to her theories.

Looking at my experience with teaching concepts whether in numeracy or in science, I find it beneficial to begin with a diagnostic to determine where my students are at, what basics skills do they possess before teaching concepts and what ideas they have formulated. Driver, Guesne & Tiberghien (1985), state that “the child, even when very young, has ideas about things, and these ideas play a role in the learning experiences” (pg. 4). Some of the programs I use include Pre-Diagnostic Before Module Assessments, a Mid-Assessment Check-Up, and lastly an End of Module Assessment to determine what growth the student made. Burgoon, Heddle & Duran (2011), state that, “if teachers are unware of the misconceptions held by their students and/or have misconceptions themselves, teachers may unknowingly reinforce new misconceptions” (p. 103). Additionally, I enjoy using Know-Wonder-Learn charts where students can indicate what they already know about the topic, what questions they have and after completing the unit, they write down information they know. This is a great tool for teachers to assess which specific area(s) further instruction needs to be directed.

It’s essential that we teach and provide various strategies for our students to learn concepts. This may include incorporating technology, using manipulatives, bringing in guest speakers, going on field studies etc., so students can use these strategies and various experiences and apply it to the concepts they are learning. Further integrating technology in the classroom has become very useful, as students can access tutorial videos or do further practice on their own time to reinforce concepts taught.

Burgoon, J.N., Heddle, M.L., Duran, E. (2011). Re-examining the similarities between teacher and student conceptions about physical science. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 22(2), 101-114. DOI: 10.1007/s10972-010-9196-x

Confrey, J. (1990). A review of the research on student conceptions in mathematics, science, and programming. Review of research in education, 16, 3-56. http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1167350

Driver, R., Guesne, E., & Tiberghien, A. (1985). Children’s ideas and the learning of science. Children’s ideas in science, 1-9.