Teachers’ perceptions of children’s misconceptions in science and their response
Maria Kambouri – University ofWarwick
Abstract
Experts agree that children’s misconceptions affect learning and acquisition of new concepts, especiallyin science. However, many teachers state that they do not haveenough time to identify children’s prior knowledge and possible misconceptions. This research will explore teachers’ perceptions of children’s misconceptions and identify methods that teachers may use in order to dissolve children’s misconceptions. Consequently, this research focuses on young children’s misconceptions and specifically it investigates cases of early year’s and first grade primary teachers in Cyprus. The investigation includes questionnaires that were send to 150 schools, two key informant interviews, observations of Cypriot teachers teaching science, pre-test and post-test trials to investigate children’s knowledge and finally, two focus groups. These will take place in Cyprus as the main objective was the Cypriot educational system and Cypriot teachers participated in the research.
Introduction
Discussion of the natural sciences has been part of our history for a very long time and everybody is affected by science in their everyday lives (Devereux, 2000). Nowadays, it is generally accepted that children already have knowledge and scientific concepts, before entering formal education, which will affect their school learning of science. Some of this knowledge is incorrect and remarkably resistant to change (Black & Lucas, 1993). Researching children’s misconceptions is crucial and the earlier we study them the better we can work with all sides of children’s thought (Ravanis & Bagakis, 1998).
Many studies confirm that learners bring into the classroom concepts, which differ from those accepted by the scientific community(Valanides, 2000). These misconceptions are not addressed by Cypriottextbooks and traditional instruction and, consequently, constitute a significant obstacle to learning. Valanides (2000) observed that in Cyprus, learners’ conceptual framework is usually not compatible with that of the teachers and the textbooks. Thus, learners do not receive the intended meaning from instruction (Valanides, 2000).
Science education in Cyprus has never been purely Cypriot (Zembylas, 2002). Cyprus has had a national curriculum in science since its independence from the British in 1960 with periodic reviews of 15 years or more having been undertaken since then.Other countries in the European Union (e.g. Germany, Italy, Portugal) have curriculum reviews every 6 to 10 years (Zembylas, 2002). The latest, third curriculum was completed in 1994 as was the science curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1996). In primary schools, subjects like physics, chemistry, biology or other unified courses are constructed on the basis of specific curricula whereas preschool curricula are not frequently founded on explicitly articulated theoretical principles. At nursery schools the science activities are more fragmentary and are confused with logico- mathematical concepts and problems of social living (Ravanis Bagakis, 1998).
Background
Nowadays, it is generally accepted that children do not come to school as a “tabula rasa” (Pine, Messer & John, 2001). Children bring into science lessons certain ideas and notions that are well established in their ways of thinking but sometimes these ideas are inconsistent with the ideas that scientists have (Treagust, 1988). Scientific concepts are those ideas that enable us to appreciate the patterns and relationships between the way things are made and the way they behave (Bradley,1996). Johnston and Gray (1999) made clear that when talking about science in early year’s education we refer to children’s understanding about the world and its development. This includes experiences from their every day lives and scientific phenomena that help children discover the world in which they live and, as a result, develop skills and understandings.
On entering formal education children already have many scientific ideas, based on early experiences that may be partially formed or scientifically inaccurate(Johnston & Gray, 1999). Schmidt characterized leaving children to their misconceptions and hoping that they will overcome them on their own as “unfair” (1995). If children’s misconceptions are known, then teachers can plan lessons to clear them up (Schmidt, 1995). On the other hand, teachers seldom have the time to identify children’s misconceptions and are often forced to assume a certain base level of students’ knowledge (Chen, Kirkby & Morin, 2006).
Additionally, teachers with experience realize that students do have their own ideas and at times these ideas may be incoherent and such ideas are known as “alternative frameworks/ideas”, “misconceptions”, “preconceptions” (Johnston & Gray, 1999). For this paper, the term “misconceptions” will be used to refer to “children’s ideas that differ from definitions and explanations accepted by scientists” (Schmidt, 1995, p1). “Misconception” is the most widely used term in the literature and this is the reason that this term is considered as the most appropriate one to use for this study (Hamza & Wickman, 2007).
Different authors have used different labels for “misconceptions” For Treagust (1988), misconceptions are children’s concepts that differ from those generally accepted by the scientific community. For Cohen and Kagan (1979) misconceptions are: student’s attempt to integrate new and old understandings. From Andre and Ding’s (1991) point of view, misconceptions are ideas that children “have incorporated into their cognitive structures that they use to understand and make predictions about the world” (p303). Such knowledge is based on students’ experience, which explains how natural world works, but in an incorrect way (e.g. heavy objects fall faster than lighter objects).
Children develop their ideas through their own thinking (Russell, & Watt, 1992). Teachers worry about “not knowing enough” because they believe that teaching means that they must have all the answer to children’s questions and present them accurate information and they feel that they need to feel comfortable with a subject that they teach in order to teach it well (Russell, & Watt, 1992). However, in practice nobody could really answer all the questions that children might raise and in many cases it would be wrong to answer them because by giving children facts that do not link into their own experience and thinking can deter them from asking questions, since they find that they cannot understand the answers (Russell & Watt, 1992).School science is about reaching possible conclusions by exploring relationships and explanations between ideas and events and it is essentially about understanding (Devereux, 2000).It also includes the testing of ideas and the proposal of new theories and questions, which change all the time as our ideas, skills and knowledge are developed through new research and evidence (Devereux, 2000).
According to Johnston and Gray (1999), learning is much more effective if the experiences are more practical as the more memorable an experience is the more likely it is to affect development and this is why early scientific experiences should be fun, child-centred learning experiences that will take account children’s prior knowledge and misconceptions (Johnston & Gray, 1999). Thus, itis important for teachers to clarify their own understanding of science that they need and use in their work in order to be comfortable and teach effectively a subject requires. Sutton (1980) reported that teacher’s role is complicated. Tirosh (2000) suggested that teacher education programs should try to familiarize teachers with common and sometime erroneous cognitive processes that children have and their effects in children’s learning procedure as knowing students’ common conceptions is essential for teaching.
The Space Project pointed that teacher’s role in science teaching is to help children develop their understanding starting from ideas that they already have through investigations of topics, discussions, explorations of children’s ideas, experiences etc (Russell, & Watt, 1992). Additionally, Pine et al highlighted that the role of the teacher is to organize the child’s misconceptions into coherent concepts, which are accurate and explicit (2001). Their research revealed that teachers describe a range of methods that can be used to find out what children already know, including discussions, brain storming, predicting etc. They added “teachers think false beliefs get in the way of the teaching process, and are best ignored or squashed as possible” (Pine et al, 2001, p92). Their findings suggest that children hold many incorrect ideas about science topics and that these ideas are of considerable importance.
During the last two decades much research have been done which demonstrate that students’ comprehension usually results from misconceptions inadequacies in their background knowledge (Eaton, Anderson and Smith, 1984). Misconceptions affect the way that children understand a variety of scientific ideas. For example, Eaton’s et al (1984) research aimed to find out if student’s misconceptions interfered with science learning. The results showed that students had difficulties in learning about light because neither their text nor their teachers adequately dealt with their misconceptions. Specifically they suggested “experiences and common sense can sometimes lead to inaccurate or incomplete conceptions that can prevent a student from learning” (Eaton et al, 1984, p1).
Osborne and Cosgrove (1983) investigated children’s misconceptions about phenomena associated with the water and specifically children’s conceptions of the changes of state of water. A series of events involving ice melting, water boiling, evaporating, and condensing, was shown to children in an individual interview situation. For each of the events, children were asked to describe what they saw happening and explain what had happen. The analysis of the interviews showed that children bring to science lessons strongly held views which relate to their experiences and these views appear to them as logical and sensible. Children have ideas about the changes of state of water but these ideas are quite different from the views of scientistsand they can be influenced in unintended ways by science teaching (Osborne and Cosgrove, 1983).
Pine et al (2001) also carried out a research into children’s misconceptions in primary science and their teachers’ views. Specifically, they developed a questionnaire aiming at identifying children’s naïve theories about topics within the Key Stage 1 curriculum in United Kingdom. Their conclusion was that children have many misconceptions about science topics and these misconceptions are of considerable importance and cannot be ignored in the learning process since they are “foundations upon which knowledge in built” (Pine et al, 2001, p93). This is why teachers need to place as much emphasis on children’s incorrect ideas as on their correct ones if they want to accomplish conceptual change in science.
Trying to understand how children form misconceptions, Hanuscin (2007) pointed out that misconceptions form in various ways and one person often passes them on to the next. She added that usually people who hold misconceptions are not aware that their ideas areincorrect. This is why when they are told that their ideas are incorrect they find it difficult to overcome their misconceptions (Hanuscin, 2007). Students with misconceptions can convince others in a group to believe them (Snyder and Sullivan, 1995). Worth (2000) believes that children’s early misconceptions arise from their own experiences while Cohen & Kagan (1979) and Hanuscin (2007) all agree that misconceptions can arise when two or more learned concepts get mixed up. Another source of misconceptions are common words, which are used in every day’s life but don’t have the same meaning when used in science (Hanuscin, 2007). Thus, misconceptions arise from both verbal and conceptual confusion (Cohen & Kagan, 1979).Considering this and in order to help children develop their ideas and conceptual understandings it is essential to provide opportunities to make links between their own ideas and other alternatives (Russell & Watt, 1992). Such opportunities could be: making predictions, gathering evidence through observations, suggesting explanations based on their own interpretations of information etc. In this way children will be helped to develop more scientific ideas which will make sense and will be connected to their everyday lives (Russell & Watt, 1992).
As a result, learners’ concepts should not be ignored but they should be part of the content of teaching. Valanides (2000) declared that several teaching- learning problems can be overcome by students who are encouraged to be actively engaged in communication than from passive learners who just sit, listen and respond when the teacher calls them upon. Students’ active engagement needs, of course, a relaxed and non-threatening classroom climate and frank exchanges among them and the teacher (Valanides, 2000).
Research questions
Considering research evidence, my research questions willcover three main areas to do with children’s misconceptions in science. These areas are: the teaching process, pupil questioning and identifications of misconceptions.
Specifically, the research questions are:
What are teachers’ perceptions of children’s misconceptions about science and how do they identify them?
How do teachers link children’s misconceptions with a new concept when planning a lesson?
How do teachers respond and use children’s misconceptions during lessons?
- How confident do pupils feel during science lessons to make mistakes and ask questions?
Methodology
The research methodology was selected carefully as it is the process of collecting and analyzing data and information to answer the research questions (Hitchcock & Hughes, 1989). Having in mind the research questions of the study it was considered more appropriated do a case study and use qualitative research methods as these approaches enable the researcher to learn at first hand about the social world they are investigating, through a focus upon what individuals say and do (Hitchcock & Hughes, 1989;Robson, 2002).The use of case study may help generalise for Cyprus as a whole.Consequently,a mixed-method design, mixing questionnaires, interviews, observations with post and pre-test andfocus groups, was designed for this research. The sample was randomly selected and it is consisted ofqualified teachers from all schools of south Cyprus working with three to seven year old children.
Specifically, the research will be completed in two phases. The first phase aims to identify key topics on which the research will focus. This will occur after analysing theteachers’ responses to the questionnaires and key informants’ interviews. The questionnaires were designed, piloted and sent to 150 schools in Cyprus aiming to discover teachers’ perception of teaching specific natural sciences’ subjects (early years and primary teachers).The schools were randomly selected, which increases external validity (Field, 2009).SPSS will be used for the analysis of the questionnaires which will reveal the key topics that interest teachers. Additionally, two Cypriotuniversity lecturers and researchers were interviewed in order to identify the current situation in Cyprus with regard to science teaching and also to find out what kind of research is taking place now in Cyprus in regard to science and misconceptions. This will also help in understanding the participants’ background and subject knowledge.
The second phase includes lesson observations and focus groups. Specifically, teachers will be observed teaching science topics that will be selected as determined by questionnaire analysis. The observations will include post-test and pre-test trials, designed by the researcher and the teachers. These will probably be games or activities with a science concept as the main element of their design and they will aim to find out children’s ideas.The observations will give an opportunity to approach teachers and children’s world in order to understand their ways of thinking and acting during a science lesson.
Finally, two focus groups will be held (one with pre-primary teachers and one with primary teachers) which will focus on teachers’ ways of teaching science and their perceptions of children’s misconceptions.
Ethical considerations
While planning the research methods some ethical considerations were revealed. One of these was informed consent,whichrefers to the voluntary consent of the individual to participate in research (Burgess, 1989).It is important that researchers ensure all participants in the research understand the process in which they are to be engaged (BERA, 2004). Additionally, morality and privacy are two more issues that need to be considered. Morality is what reminds us the importance of considering other people’s interests and concerns when thinking about how to act, what to say and what to do (Gregory, 2003). On the other hand,participants’ privacy and rights to confidentiality and anonymity are also important. Also participants should be informed about how and why their personal data will be used and stored (BERA, 2004).
The specific researchtakes the above under consideration and all participants will be informed about the research methods. Fictional names will be used in order to ensure privacy. Finally, their right to withdraw will be known since the first moment.