{"id":4411,"date":"2018-01-10T19:09:21","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T02:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/?p=4411"},"modified":"2018-01-10T19:10:25","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T02:10:25","slug":"4411","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/2018\/01\/10\/4411\/","title":{"rendered":"Constructivism’s Answer to Children’s Misconceptions in Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Disclaimer: It\u2019s been a long time since I\u2019ve taught Science and an even longer time since I\u2019ve taught Math so I found this activity challenging because I don\u2019t really have anything to comment on that is relevant to my personal practice.\u00a0 I tried to read the course article about Children\u2019s 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\u2019t find the article online that didn\u2019t cost money to read. I read an article that referenced Erickson\u2019s work however, Children\u2019s Ideas About Hot and Cold (Appleton, 1984). \u00a0The last Science I\u2019ve taught has been to Grades 1-3 students and I really wanted to read Children\u2019s 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).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From McClelland & Krockover’s abstract and introduction, however, I have found that many of the peculiarities of children\u2019s understandings are echoed in the video and the other readings. \u00a0McClelland & 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. \u00a0This 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). <\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201clive with the contradiction\u201d rather than challenge their personally held conception (Appleton, 1984). \u00a0This reminded me of Vygotsky\u2019s ZPD and of Piaget\u2019s understanding of the symbiotic dance of learner-teacher in a child\u2019s schema-construction rather than the \u201ctabula rasa\u201d Shapiro (1988) references which had been the guiding pedagogy of 1960s-80s. \u00a0McClelland & Krockover (1996) supported Piaget and Vygotsky\u2019s worldview\u2019s 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. \u00a0This 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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

All the researchers I read made a strong case for the use of constructivist and constructionist practices in the Science classroom.\u00a0 Shapiro (1988) did this when she pointed out the value placed on both hands-on and self-directed \u201cexperiments\u201d 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\u2019s experience; and McClelland & Krockover (1996) directly identified the present view \u201cthat learning is the result of the interaction between what children are taught or what they experience, and their current ideas or conceptions (Driver, 1981)\u201d (p.33) and targeted constructivist concepts of prior knowledge and social interaction as active meaning-makers in children\u2019s understanding of scientific concepts.\u00a0 All of this points to the necessity, in my opinion, of rethinking the amount of information teachers are expected to \u201ccover\u201d in each science unit. \u00a0A 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/b><\/p>\n

Appleton, K. (1984). Children\u2019s Ideas About Hot and Cold. Learning About Science Project (Primary). Working Paper No. 127. Retrieved from: <\/span>https:\/\/files.eric.ed.gov\/fulltext\/ED252407.pdf<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

McClelland, A.K. & Krockover, G.H. (1996) <\/span>Children\u2019s understandings of science: Goldilocks and the Three Bears revisited<\/span>. <\/span>J Elem Sci Edu (8)32. <\/span>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/BF03173747<\/span><\/a> Retrieved from: <\/span>https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007%2FBF03173747?LI=true<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Shapiro, B (1988). <\/span>What children bring to light: Towards Understanding What the Primary School Science Learner Is Trying to Do<\/b><\/a> \u00a0Retrieved from: <\/span>https:\/\/files.eric.ed.gov\/fulltext\/ED309081.pdf<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Disclaimer: It\u2019s been a long time since I\u2019ve taught Science and an even longer time since I\u2019ve taught Math so I found this activity challenging because I don\u2019t really have anything to comment on that is relevant to my personal practice.\u00a0 I tried to read the course article about Children\u2019s Conceptions of Heat and Temperature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51923,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1669382],"tags":[1061,673],"class_list":["post-4411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-conceptual-challenges","tag-constructivism","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51923"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4411"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4414,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions\/4414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}