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Re: [Phys-L] Edu Videos



1. Which specific experiments show that the bringing up of misconceptions is
detrimental?
2. Mazur & Crouch have shown experimentall that it is necessary to bring up
misconcepted ideas by having students predict results before they see them.
3. Misconceptions are never dispelled by just presenting the correct
information. Essentially the correct information is stored separately and
when pressed students resort to the misconceptions rather than the new
information. So if misconceptions are to be removed they must be brought
up. This is known as reconsolidation. When you bring up a memory into
short term storage you later store it back again. While it is in short term
memory it is possible to change it. This can be used to brainwash people
into believeing they had experiences that never existed, or it can be used
to dispel misconceptions. This in now firm settled cognitive psychology.
But the experiments about this may have been around for over 20 years.
4. Arguments do not settle the question. Experiments settle it. Basically
all PER pedagogy which has been shown to be more effective brings up
misconceptions at some point or the other. I also pointed out that
experiments have shown that peer discussions of two models, one of which is
a common misconception does help students accept the preferred model. There
are a number of papers in JRST which showed that refutational text which
explicitly refutes misconceptions does have effectiveness. But from what I
have seen it is not a very large effect.
4. RE: pedagogy.htm#sec-miscon "Whenever the topic of misconceptions comes
up, Explaining the correct conceptions should always come first." NO, this
is the conventional method. PER always starts with misconceptions by having
students predict first, because the researchers have found it works better.
The conventional method leaves the misconceptions in place. Indeed students
can hold simultaneously conflicting ideas and never notice the conflict.
There is a lot of literature to support this.
5. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it."
- platitude, surprising from someone who is not a believer. But turning it
around, you have to see the misconception to be able to overcome it. If you
are blind to it, no amount of light in other places will help. So this can
have a double meaning.
6. "By way of analogy: If you have a healthy lawn, you won't have much
trouble with weeds. They can't compete." That is an incorrect analogy. In
your memory the misconceptions are not crowded out by the new ideas. They
stay and are lurking. So when you are pressed they tend to come out. This
happens even with experts. They often go with the misconception, but later
correct themselves. But starting from the misconceptions it is possible to
build chains which prevent them from being a problem. The "anchor and
bridging analogies" by Clement & Camp do this. They do it by starting with
what students know and then proceed to build a chain of experimental
pictures toward the target idea. Along the way students discuss and bring
up the misconceptions.
7. a, b, c, d on the pedagogy.htm#sec-miscon section are just statements of
opinion. But I did not see any experimental evidence cited for the opinions
in the rest of the article. It is all an opinion piece written as to
pusuade the reader without presenting evidence.

If you want evidence go to the many PER articles. For example the articles
on the ILDS show that students do better on tests like the FMCE. The ILDS
all bring up misconceptions at first, but not by having the instructor do
it. Instead the students do it individually on their prediction sheets.
Then the predictions are exposed by having students tell the instructor. It
is suggested that if they won't expose the misconceptions, then the
instructor says "some students would say..." and bring them up himself.
Then while the information is still in short term memory, the experiment is
done and the instructor points out the answers which student put on the
prediction sheets. Then there is some student explanation and the
instructor can point to analogous situations so that the students can bridge
to other situations.

Again I would point to the literature on refutational text. While the
effect is small, it still is there. Explicit refutation does improve the
percentage of right responses in subsequent testing.

So instructors bringing up misconception is probably not the best way, but
when students bring them up then reconsolidation is possible. Unfortunately
it is difficult to do this in a video. But I would point to the research
that shows how peers discussing alternative conceptions can work. So videos
should have peers debating and resolving opposing models, not instructors.
There are some good papers in AJP on this, especially one in New Zealand
where I recall the class discussed alternative optical(?) Models and
achieved much better understanding than in a conventional class where they
are told the "truth".

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

John, you have written this many times, but is there any
data to support your belief?

Not much, except for approximately everything ever published
in the psychology-of-learning literature.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q="primacy+effect"+experiment

On 03/28/2013 06:54 AM, Rauber, Joel wrote:

Is there any data to support the contrary belief?

Good question. I've supported my point in detail, with
multiple arguments leading to the same conclusion.
http://www.av8n.com/physics/pedagogy.htm#sec-miscon

If somebody wants to argue the against this, I'm willing to
listen, but you need to /actually state the argument/.
Double-negative rhetorical questions don't cut it.