Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Worrying about Misconceptions

Earlier this week, I was making some "whirli-gigs" to be used in a mock lesson intended to involve students in exploring, thinking, and investigating falling objects. The whirli-gigs are made of paper and they have blades which make them spin as they fall, causing variable amounts of drag.

In this middle school science lesson, students begin by freely exploring how they can make the whirligigs fall faster or slower, keeping track of what they notice and what questions arise as they explore. It is expected that students will begin to notice and wonder a variety of things, including how the length of the blades, the shape and angle of the blades, and the mass influence the rate of falling and /or spinning; and that this noticing and questioning will lead to more carefully designed experimenting and measuring in subsequent investigations.

A college instructor who was watching me prepare for this lesson asked, "Aren't you worried that this lesson will reinforce the misconception that faster things fall faster than lighter things?"

Before I share I how I responded, I am interested to hear what others think about this question and how others might respond.

6 comments:

  1. Hmm, at first glance I would say I would be somewhat concerned. I do find myself cringing from time to time when I hear explanations in elementary and middle school science that play into misconceptions. However, your posts have really gotten me thinking, and I don't think in this case it would worry me much, since it would be pretty easy to guide the students to an experiment to test the idea that heavy things fall faster than lighter things—crumple them up and see what happens.

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  2. @John, I think we've all felt that kind of "cringe" reaction before. It makes me think that it's worth a bit of our introspection. Do you have a sense of what you feelings/thoughts underlie that reaction, for you personally?

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  3. Brian,
    That's a great question. My education in physics, for the most part was filled with sit-and-get. It wasn't until I started teaching that I realized how many misconceptions and confusions I had in my own understanding of the subject, and it took great effort for me to uproot and reconcile these. And when I first started doing this, I think I thought "If my teachers would have just explained this misconception to me, I wouldn't have it now." I think my cringe is based on that old feeling of knowing how much work it took to overcome some of my misunderstandings about fundamental topics, and when I hear these things presented again in ES and MS teaching, I think students will have to go through the same struggle.

    But now, after reflecting on it a bit more, I bet many of my teachers did try to explain those misconceptions to me, and despite this, they had very little effect on me. I don't think one really learns physics by having the "right" ideas explained to you. To me, many of my most memorable learning moments came from when teachers exposed me to a paradox, and then left me to my own devices to resolve it (similar to the pressure paradox you presented earlier). So I'm thinking I'm trying to be a bit more comfortable with the idea that the misconception isn't the big deal—it's wether or not the teacher is giving the student a framework to test/explore the idea.

    But still, when I hear middle school teachers talking about "wrong" ideas like "fire is a plasma" or "mass is always conserved" I cringe. Now, it's less for the fact that this isn't correct, but instead that you're simply dropping an idea (and a ton of meaningless vocabulary) into students' brains without any framework to explore that idea on their own.

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  4. Hey John,

    Thanks for sharing this bit of your history and current thinking. There is an interesting contrast I see:

    "I think my cringe is based on that old feeling of knowing how much work it took to overcome some of my misunderstandings... and I think students will have to go through the same struggle."

    "To me, many of my most memorable learning moments came from when teachers exposed me to a paradox, and then left me to my own devices to resolve it."

    I think this contrasts gets a bit at the heart of something important, misunderstanding as obstacle vs opportunity...

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  5. This is definitely a shift in my own thinking. As a student I wanted to know the answer and avoid failure/misconception as much as possible. It's really only upon later reflection that I recognize that most of the moments where I really learned something came from wrestling with paradoxes/misconceptions/failure. A big open question for me is how to teach this lesson to students, since many of them think the best way to learn is to simply be told what to know/do and do it.

    Also, there's a second issue of the instructor's knowledge that makes me think a bit more about whether it's ok to "reinforce misconceptions." I think another factor to consider is whether the instructor understands that misconception and how to address it. Somehow, I'd be a bit more concerned about a less experienced teacher just building whirly-gigs with students and experimenting. If s/he isn't aware that this experiment can lead to that misconception, it seems to be more problematic...

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  6. With the blogger fail, a lot of comments here were lost... I'll try to work on bringing them back.

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