Research School Network: Misconception Mayhem…

I remember one of the first things that was discussed during the first week of my PGCE almost four years ago was how responding to and overcoming misconceptions that students bring to science lessons was going to be one of the most important and difficult challenges we face. Four years in to teaching and it’s safe to say that my tutors were right on both counts. Whether it is a KS3 lesson on living organisms or a GCSE lesson on heat transfer misconceptions are as rife as they are stubborn, fortunately there is a wealth of guidance to help us to support students in challenging these.

Where do misconceptions come from?

The reasons that students harbour misconceptions are numerous; in the book Science Teaching Reconsidered: A handbook [1] the authors outline the following categories of misconceptions:

• Preconceived notions – for example students at KS3 are often surprised to learn that some bacteria are beneficial as they have linked bacteria to germs and have learned that ​“germs make you sick”. 
• Non-scientific beliefs – these may originate from mass media such as TV and books. These may be particularly evident when a scientific concept or theory has strong opposition.
• Conceptual misunderstandings – these are where students have developed faulty mental models when learning threshold concepts, such as the theory of evolution, chemical bonding, and Newton’s laws of motion.
• Language misconceptions – these can develop when homonyms are not explicitly taught, such as what ​“work” or ​“field” means in physics.
• Factual misconceptions – these can be fostered from common phrases such as ​“lightning never strikes the same place twice” or ​“the sun rises in the east and sets in the west”.

Of these, I am certain that most of us would identify conceptual misunderstandings as the most challenging to overcome as they rely on dismantling and reconstructing mental models that students may have. Mental models, or schemas, are units of knowledge which learners have developed as a result of various inputs. These inputs will include the everyday experiences of learners outside of education and experiences in the classroom or other educational setting. A learner blends all of these inputs to develop a conceptual framework makes sense to them, the problem with this is that some of the inputs may be faulty, creating a weak foundation for this framework – the challenge we have is to dismantle this framework, embed a new foundation and build on it with thoughtful and well-curated teaching episodes.

How can we challenge misconceptions?

The EEF’s Improving Secondary Science guidance report suggests that a vital element of effective science teaching is understanding and diagnosing misconceptions that students have and supporting students in developing new frameworks. Dr Niki Kaiser, in her EEF blog suggests a three-stage approach to tackling misconceptions:

• Research and Anticipate – Don’t wait for student misconceptions to manifest in the classroom, there is a wealth of knowledge on this area both in print, on-line and in subject communities to pre-empt these.
• Diagnose and Address – Use diagnostic questioning and other formative assessment tools to respond to student’s needs.
• Assess and Review – Use retrieval practice techniques to revisit areas where misconceptions are common.

A recipe for future action…

The diagnosing and addressing stage may use various forms of diagnostic questioning to assess student understanding (and misunderstanding) Diagnostic questioning goes beyond a binary assessment of knowing/​not knowing and looks at the thought processes behind student responses, this inevitably will mean that we need to go back and look at alternative approaches to explaining a concept depending on student success rate.

Planning for this is essential a teaching sequence could involve the following steps:

1. Discussion about a key concept, that explicitly challenges the misconception and why the assumptions are faulty.
2. Pose a multiple-choice question – this could go beyond a simple A, B or C answer and could also ask students to give a confidence level – inviting further probing questions. These questions can be used to decide on the next teaching phase*:

• If class success rate is high (80+ %) for step 2, students could produce a refutation text. short paragraphs in which students state the misconception, explain why the misconception is incorrect, and then state the correct scientific viewpoint.
• If the success rate is lower than 80% it could be beneficial to look at student examples under a visualiser and discuss their responses, before posing a second diagnostic question.
• If the success rate is lower than 50% for the first diagnostic question it is likely that further exposition is needed – with carefully considered analogies, diagrams and models.

Conclusion

Of course, the journey to overcoming misconceptions will be much longer and effortful than in the brief teaching phase outlined above, and challenging misconceptions should be included in retrieval practice opportunities and summative assessments, with a longer-term approach to develop metacognitive learners who can identify and challenge misconceptions before they become too entrenched.

*Note that these practices are taken from a recent webinar led by Phil Stock, Director of the Greenshaw Research School into Effective Formative Assessment.

[1] National Research Council 1997. Science Teaching Reconsidered: A Handbook. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/5287.