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Ironically, activating students’ prior knowledge can be a mixed blessing if some of the prior knowledge is misleading or downright wrong. Misleading or erroneous knowledge is especially common among young students, but it can happen at any grade level. A kindergarten child may think that the sun literally “rises” in the morning, since she often hears adults use this expression, or that the earth is flat because it obviously looks flat. But a high school student may mistakenly believe that large objects (a boulder) fall faster than small ones (a pebble), or that a heavy object dropped (not thrown) from a moving car window will fall straight down instead of traveling laterally alongside the car while it falls.
Because misconceptions are quite common among students and even among adults, teachers are more effective if they can anticipate preconceptions of students wherever possible. The task is twofold. First the teacher must know or at least guess students’ preconceptions as much as possible in advance, so that she can design learning activities to counteract and revise their thinking. Some preconceptions have been well-documented by educational research and therefore can in principle be anticipated easily—though they may still sometimes take a teacher by surprise during a busy activity or lesson (Tanner&Allen, 2005; Chiu&Lin, 2005). Exhibit 9.8 lists a few of these common preconceptions. Others may be unique to particular students, however, and a teacher may only by able to learn of them through experience—by listening carefully to what students say and write and by watching what they do. A few preconceptions may be so ingrained or tied to other, more deeply held beliefs that students may resist giving them up, either consciously or unconsciously. It may be hard, for example, for some students to give up the idea that girls are less talented at math or science than are boys, even though research generally finds this is not the case (Hyde&Linn, 2006).
| Misconception | What to do |
| Stars and constellations appear in the same place in the sky every night. | Ask students to observe carefully the locations of a bright star once a week for several weeks. |
| The world is flat, circular like a pancake. | Use a globe or ball to find countries located over the horizon; use computer software (e.g. Global Earth) to illustrate how a round Earth can look flat up close. |
| Dinosaurs disappeared at the same time that human beings appeared and because of human activity. | Construct a timeline of major periods of Darwinian evolution. |
| Rivers always flow from North to South. | Identify rivers that flow South to North (e.g. the Red River in North Dakota and Canada); talk about how Southern locations are not necessarily “lower”. |
| Force is needed not only to start an object moving, but to keep it moving. | Explain the concept of inertia; demonstrate inertia using low-friction motion (e.g. with a hovercraft or dry-ice puck). |
| Volume, weight, and size are identical concepts. | Have students weigh objects of different sizes or volumes, and compare the results. |
| Seasons happen because the Earth changes distance from the sun. | Explain the tilt of Earth’s axis using a globe and light as a model; demonstrate reduced heating of surfaces by placing similar surfaces outdoors at different angles to the sun’s rays. |
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