Resource 4: Developing understanding

Alternative misconceptions can be hard to change and can interfere with meaningful learning in science. What you need to do, therefore, is to teach in a way that will help your students to reconstruct their ‘faulty’ ideas and change their conceptual understanding. Sanger and Greenbowe (2000) described conceptual change as requiring the realignment, reorganisation and replacement of ‘existing misconceptions in order to accommodate new ideas’ (2000, p. 522).

Learning is not necessarily simply a case of adding new information to existing ideas and theories. The existing ideas may need dismantling and new ones built to replace them. This is particularly the case in science. Vosniadou et al. (2001) pointed out that scientific explanations of physical phenomena are often not intuitive and contrary to our everyday experience.

There is a great deal of research literature on how teachers can develop students’ scientific understanding and change their alternative conceptions. Simply giving them information through telling is known to be unsuccessful in many instances. The students’ alternative conceptions interfere with their learning of new ideas, and may lead to their rejection. Some of the key approaches you could use are listed below.

1. Cognitive conflict occurs when you experience evidence that conflicts with and discredits your existing ideas. For example, if you hold the idea that ice makes water colder, even when it is at 0 °C, it is easy to provide evidence that will be in conflict. You need to use cognitive conflict events carefully. It can be relatively easy to provide the conflicting evidence that results in dissatisfaction with ideas. However, something is needed to replace these ideas if the student is not to be left confused and revert to their previous ideas. So you need to present a better, plausible explanation, or a theory that is understandable and meaningful to the learner.
2. Analogies and models can be useful when presenting new ideas. For example, you might use the students themselves to model the particles in water when it is heated and cooled.
3. Discussion time contends that learning is not an individual activity but a social one. Through discussion, students can compare their own beliefs with others. Discussions enable students to raise questions and consider the value of supporting evidence for the new ideas. Discussion helps students to make sense of the cognitive conflict experience and new ideas. Even though discussions are time-consuming, they are essential if meaningful learning is to occur.
4. History of science. Your students may find science difficult and associate it with ‘brainy’ people. The fact that some extremely clever scientists in the past have held ideas similar to their own is often a revelation. Several authors advocate the use of the storyline approach in teaching for conceptual change (Masson and Vázquez-Abad, 2006). This involves telling the story of the evolution of a scientific concept in chronological order. Such concepts often change from simple to complex and from intuitive to abstract. Through examining the ideas of past scientists, students can examine their own ideas and in a less threatening way.