[Phys-L] Re: electricity

[John M Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

> As a point of pedagogy:  One of the advantages of teaching
> young kids is that you can teach them the right conceptions
> before they've had a chance to form too many misconceptions.
> Therefore a site featuring a massive list of misconceptions
> is the wrong place to start.
Unfortunately this is a misconception.  Arnold Arons thought that
students were tabla rasa with respect to elctrical ideas, and he was
quite wrong.  Look at the research of McDermott and Minstrell among
others for information on misconceptions.  Misconceptions are picked
up without any help from school, but they are also picked up because
of teachers who do not understand the concepts.

The main problem with a long list of misconceptions is what to do
about them, and which ones need to be considered.  The teacher should
be aware of these, and be sensative to the fact that students may have
difficulty because of imbedded misconceptions.  Also the teacher needs
to be aware that some misconceptions may be impossible to address in
the lower grades because they may require formal operational thinking
or at least the higher levels of concrete operational thinking.  So
the site can have some value, but without information as to how the
misconceptions are formed, and what ages are necessary to treat them,
the site is of limited usefulness.

By all means use the site as a guide to help you interpret what you
see in the classroom, but be aware that there may be more that you
need to know.  Teachers must become aware of the issue of
misconceptions, but they also must be aware of the usefulness of a
good coherent research designed curriculum which places a premium on
students' constructing the concepts.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX