Science Teachers Strategies for Addressing Pupils Misconceptions in the Classroom

Physics Teachers Strategies and Reflective Ability for Addressing Pupils’ Misconceptions in the Classroom

Nurulhuda Abd Rahman

Faculty of Education

The University of Manchester, UK

0161-202-6532

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Manchester, 16-18 September 2004

Keywords: Misconceptions, Physics, Reflectivity

Abstract: Research into pupils’ ideas has established that pupils bring with them preconceptions about the natural world that are mostly at odds with the scientific conceptions (termed misconceptions) that teachers are trying to teach in class. Research in this area has also advocated that effective teaching entails teaching strategies that take into account these pupils’ misconceptions and which emphasize conceptual understanding (as opposed to rote learning) Researchers called these strategies teaching for conceptual change strategies. In order to identify teaching for conceptual change strategies that teachers employ during regular lessons, classroom observations and interviews were conducted with 14 secondary physics teachers. Novice and experienced teachers’ strategies for addressing pupils’ misconceptions, and their ability to be reflective about their way of addressing these misconceptions were analysed. Almost all the teachers in this study did not employ any specific teaching for conceptual change strategies as articulated in the literature such as cognitive conflict, bridging analogy, or metacognitive strategies. They were seen to rely heavily on a question-and-answer strategy with low-level, recall questions designed to assess pupils’ understanding. Only three out of the fourteen teachers (1 experienced and 2 novices) conduct class discussions where pupils were encouraged to express their ideas and only three teachers (2 experienced and 1 novice) were seen to specifically address pupils’ misconceptions. Post-lesson reflective interviews reveal that teachers’ reflections vary in their depth, and this variation appears to be independent of experience. The implications of these findings and recommendations for teacher training are presented.

Introduction

This is a report of the second phase of a study, which investigates teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge with regards to pupils’ misconceptions in physics learning. Specifically the study aims to understand how teachers’ viewpoints about misconceptions relate to their classroom teaching practices in terms of addressing these misconceptions. The study also investigates teachers’ reflection about their way of addressing misconceptions in the classroom as this may provide insight into the complex relation between teachers’ stated beliefs and practice. The first phase of the study, which was reported elsewhere (Abd. Rahman, in press) was conducted to explore physics teachers’ views and attitudes towards misconceptions in physics learning. The finding is presented briefly in the next section.

Most people would agree that beliefs and views play a significant role in determining how we perceive, interpret, and organize information (Schommer, 1990). For teachers, it also serves as a basis for action in the classroom (Pajares, 1992). Pajares noted that terms such as views, beliefs, attitudes, values, judgements, opinions, conceptions, dispositions, to name a few, have all been used to refer to beliefs. In this study, the term views or viewpoints is used to indicate general idea or opinion about something. For Haney, Lumpe, Czerniak, and Egan (2002), beliefs are “personal convictions or ideas” one holds. Clusters of beliefs form attitudes or action agendas (Ajzen, 1985). In the science domain, although there are many studies that explore teachers’ beliefs and viewpoints (views about the nature of science, nature of teaching and learning, etc.) and how these beliefs and viewpoints affect their instructional practices in the classroom, there are very few studies that attempt to explore teachers understanding of pupils’ misconceptions of a specific subject and how this relates to the way teachers deal with the misconceptions in their classrooms. This seems to confirm Fang’s (1996) claim that “little attention has been paid to teachers’ beliefs about particular components of a subject area” (p. 59). Consequently, little is known about what teachers’ ‘conception of misconceptions’ is even though this should be an important element influencing how teachers acted in the classroom when confronted with such misconceptions. However previous studies which investigated the relation between teachers’ stated beliefs and action showed mixed results. Even results within a particular study found that beliefs are not always valid predictors of practice (Haney, Lumpe, Czerniak & Egan, 2002, Widodo, Duit, & Muller, 2002). These findings suggest that the relation between belief and practice is complex with many variables contributing to the teachers teaching behaviours. Argyris and Schön (1974) put forwards the notion of “espoused theory” and “theory-in-use”:

“When someone is asked how he would behave under certain circumstances, the answer he usually gives is his espoused theory of action for that situation. This is the theory of action to which he gives allegiance, and which, upon request, he communicates to others. However the theory that actually governs his actions is his theory-in-use, which may or may not be compatible with his espoused theory; furthermore, the individual may or may not be aware of incompatibility of the two theories” (p. 6-7)

In other words, teachers’ action may not always be seen to be consistent with their espoused beliefs. Teachers’ actual classroom practice reflects theories-in-use, which are, not only governed by teachers’ espoused theory but also by contextual factors (e.g. classroom environment, pupils’ ability, etc.). Hence, there may be a substantial gap between teachers’ views and actions (Duit, 2002). For example, teachers who articulated a constructivist view of teaching and learning will not necessarily teach in a manner consistent with their espoused constructivist view. Underlying these two variables is the teachers’ ability to reflect upon their practice in class, which may provide some sort of bridge between the two. The literature on teachers’ reflection suggests that reflective teachers are teachers who are able to identify and recognize a significant issue, apply educational principles and techniques within a framework based on their own experiences, values and beliefs, on which to base and justify their action or disposition so as to reach a certain goal (Calderhead, 1988; Schon, 1987; Jay and Johnson, 2002; Zeichner and Liston, 1996). This conception of reflective teacher implies that reflection has a positive link with teachers’ professional development in terms of their ability to effect quality pupils’ learning, hence a desirable ‘asset’ for a teacher. Reflection helps reconcile prior beliefs with theory and practice, bridge the gap between theory and practice, and reconstruct professional knowledge from contextual knowledge 9Calderhead, 1988; Schon, 1987). There is a general consensus that reflectivity leads to professional growth (Allen, 1997). There is however little research carried out to systematically link reflection to teaching behaviours and beliefs. Efforts in this direction have often focused on the thinking of preservice teachers (Taggart and Wilson, 1998) and hence provide rather limited picture on the state of reflective abilities of teachers in general. There are empirical evidence to suggest that purposeful and focused reflection on one’s practice have a direct impact on beliefs and subsequent practices and move teachers towards more constructivist teaching approaches (Richardson, 1996).

This study aims at extending the understanding of the extent of teachers’ awareness and knowledge of pupils’ misconceptions in physics (via the first phase) and the complex relation between the teachers’ stated beliefs and practice (via observation of practice and post-lesson interview). Observation of practice is also a way of getting insight into not only the nature of teachers’ “espoused” beliefs but also on their “theories-in-use” as well. Post-lesson reflective interview provides data that can be used to evaluate teachers’ reflective thinking in relation to their views and actual behaviours in classrooms.

Teachers’ general beliefs and attitudes towards pupils’ misconceptions

In the earlier phase of the study three distinct teachers’ subjective viewpoints emerged from factor analysing data using Q technique, which is the method of analysing data in studies employing Q methodology (Refer to Brown, 1980 for a full description of Q Methodology). Briefly, participant teachers rank-ordered a set of 50 statements (Refer to Appendix A for the list of the 50 statements) from agree to disagree, according to a quasi-normal distribution, followed by a focused interview during which a sorter elaborated on his/her experience. Q-sort data was factor analysed using PQMethod, version 2.11 (Schmolck, 2002), a dedicated statistical software which produced among other results, factors that correspond to distinct types of beliefs or attitudes. Result shows that operationally, two thirds of the twenty-three participants involved were tolerant/positive acceptant (17.4%), confrontational/non acceptant (30.4%) or less aware/indifferent (17.4%) about the status of misconceptions and how to address them. The other one-third teachers who did not fall under these three categories can be classified as either hybrid teachers (they loaded significantly onto two or more factors; 30.4%) or a null case (he defined none of the main factors; 4.3%).

Tolerant teachers had a more positive attitude towards pupils’ misconceptions and did not reject the idea that a misconception can be considered as an alternative way of looking at a problem situation. Although they advocated, ultimately, the replacing of a misconception with the appropriate scientific conception, they supported promoting multiple perspectives approach towards a problem situation in equal fervour. They did not support ‘teaching by confronting’ misconceptions in order to resolve them. Tolerant teachers were also not convinced that misconceptions interfere with pupils’ learning of scientific conceptions. After all they thought that some misconceptions are helpful for everyday purposes. For example, the idea of ‘force causes motion (velocity)’ is helpful when you wish to move something around the house. However this may constitute a misconception since Newtonian conception of motion states that ‘force causes change in motion (acceleration)’ not velocity. In order to address misconceptions in class, tolerant teachers believed that it requires a good balance between teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogy. Hence there was a lack of support for conventional teaching methods, which usually include one-way lectures and a recipe-based laboratory.

By contrast, confrontational teachers had a negative attitude toward pupils’ misconceptions. They believed that misconceptions are inherently flawed, and hence are not useful material for either building expert conceptions or for everyday purposes. There was a strong support amongst these teachers for a confrontational approach when dealing with misconceptions, which should be dealt with in class because they believed these misconceptions will not go away with further exposure and experience. They were however ambivalent towards conventional teaching methods preferring not to espoused a particular teaching method.

The third type of teachers presented as less aware or even indifferent about misconceptions. Teachers in this category were uncertain about quite a lot of crucial issues concerning misconceptions such as the worth of misconceptions in learning and everyday lives, the extent to which the problem affects learners, and the way to address the problem in class. However it should be borne in mind that there are some similarities among teachers who hold different perspective on some dimensions. Q factor analysis does not assume the categories are mutually exclusive – people can resemble more than one factor to differing degrees.

With regards to differences between novice and experienced teachers’ views, the result suggests that there is little difference between them. Without the use of inferential statistics (because of the small number of participants) it cannot be inferred with confidence whether the difference is statistically significant or not. However the data show that every factor type is represented by both groups of teachers. This suggests that experienced teachers can be just as tolerant, confrontational or less aware of misconceptions as novice teachers. In terms of awareness and understanding of pupils’ misconceptions, it also means that teachers don’t necessarily simply improve by having years of teaching experience. On the other hand, recent Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum (DfEE, 1998) has put an emphasis on PCK in the area of pupils’ misconceptions. It clearly specified that teacher trainees be taught about pupils’ misconceptions in terms of their existence, origins and the way to address them in class. If the new training curriculum has any significant effect on the teachers, it is expected instead that novice teachers will be more aware of pupils’ misconceptions as they emerged fresh from their training.

Based on these three perspectives what may the teachers see as tasks for teaching? Results suggest that all three perspectives have similar judgments about teaching tasks. All advocate that in the end misconceptions need to be removed and replaced with the appropriate conceptions. Universal support for a ‘remove and replace’ approach is not surprising and is most probably due to the fact that, at the end of the day, pupils will face a fairly severe assessment process based largely on their science knowledge and understanding (and reflecting to some extent on how well they have been taught). The difference is in the way the teachers go about ‘removing and replacing’ these misconceptions. From one perspective it is the ‘softly-softly’ approach whereas the other is the ‘confrontational’ approach. Still another is clouded by uncertainties. How do the ‘softly-softly’, ‘confrontational’ and ‘uncertain’ approaches translate into classroom practice, if at all? Do these approaches in fact specifically address pupils’ misconceptions during lesson? How do these practices compare with the ones advocated by research in this area as being potentially superior in terms of resolving misconceptions? Do these practices relate in any way to the teachers’ views and attitudes towards misconceptions which the earlier phase of the study has brought to light? Were the teachers able to be reflective about their way of addressing these misconceptions if one became apparent during their lesson? These are among the questions that this phase of the research will try to answer.

A review of strategies to explicitly address misconceptions

Research programme in the area of pupils’ conceptual understanding in science has not only provided a huge amount of information about pupils’ misconceptions per se, but also its implications for classroom practice. One strong implication is advocating teaching strategies that take into account pupil’s misconceptions and which emphasize conceptual understanding (as opposed to rote learning), popularly known as teaching for conceptual change. Teaching for conceptual change draws upon various aspects of underlying learning theories but the two most influential models of learning are the conceptual change model and the constructivists learning model. The term conceptual change itself denotes learning pathways from pupils’ preconceptions (which could include correct and incomplete conceptions and also misconceptions) to the science concepts to be learned (Duit, 2002)