What can teachers do to tackle student misconceptions? An example.

Posner and Strike (1992) suggest that the following conditions must be met if students are to correct their misconceptions (or to have them corrected):

• There must be some dissatisfaction with the student’s current understanding. Students are unlikely to be aware of these, and it therefore falls to us to make them purposefully aware of the ones they hold. This can be difficult, as theories” work for them perfectly well in their everyday lives, and we have to tutor students to become critical of their own thinking.
• The new conception must be intelligible or understandable to learners. This is where our skill in representing ideas specifically tailored to the learning needs of the students in front of us comes to the fore. Our assessment practices need to allow the students (and teachers) to see that they are ‘getting it’.
• The new conception must appear initially plausible; it must seem to be a better possible answer than the misconception. 
• Keeping our instruction ‘real’, rooted in what is known (i.e. their prior knowledge), making connections clear and using concrete examples all help students to alter their understanding of things.
• Finally, the new conception should suggest the possibility being fruitful or useful to them as learners. We can do this by helping students transfer their new understanding and applying it to new examples.

I would humbly add that the role of planned multiple exposures to the correct conception is also essential. Undermining hard held believes is going to take time to shift. 

Strategy 1: Encouaging dissatisfaction.

These tasks are designed to make students ware of the misconception, in a way the makes it absolutely clear that the student did not know that they did not know. For this to happen the alternate answers must at least seem plausible and contain the same kind of content as the correct answer.
The following example, fails to do this with only one plausible answer as John Fashanu, Noel Edmonds and Skeletor did not ride the Tour de France until the 1980's. That was a joke by the way, I point out this not as way of being facetious but as a way of emphasising that it is quite easy to accidently teach a misconception. 

For more on the design of multiple choice question I highly recommend this from Vanderbilt University

In this science example, students often think that the current comes from the battery, jumping out when the circuit is connected. In addition this misconception is linked to another where student believe the current is "used up".  So this dealing with this first will allow this idea to be transferred and applied to this situation. It is therefore going to be fruitful, and be part of a sequence of multiple exposures to the correct concept.

Note that only three options are given in this question , but importantly all answers are plausible.  So rather than sticking to a steadfast rule of  say "I will always give 5 options", the plausibility of the content takes precedence. 

When deliberately trying to exposure a misconception, I tend to do so with a whole class discussion. Using techniques that involves as many students as possible, for instance: asking for hands up fro each response, before asking a few students why they think what they do. Interestingly this year I had one student, almost instantly,  asking " is this about a metals delocalised electrons?" He knew the answer but was not confident about, so exposing it and reinforcing the correct answer can help those with and without significant prior knowledge on the content. If he had of been confident my tactic would have been to  defer my answer in an attempt to create a bit of ambiguity, to encourage dissatisfaction, and further thought. Normally stuidents think ( and they did even when this student spoke up) that the current comes from the battery. I try to avoid telling them that they are wrong, as I wan them to doubt it themselves first. So ambigous responses such as "mmm interetsing" help do this. 

Although, I may use a similar or even the same question in a Pre Quiz to a module, when attempting to incite some dissatisfaction with the student’s current understanding it is important that we focus on one concept at a time whenever possible. Clearly some misconceptions will have complex and interconnected reasosn so this is is not always possible. 

Strategy 2: A plausible and intelligible alternative

The next slide has my follow up to this discussion, I plan to not give the definitive answer until after the students have discussed the next slide. This slide is intended to make clear in the simplest possible terms what the correct idea is. In this case that the electrons that form the current are already present within the components of the circuit, and that on completion the battery provides a 'push' to make these charges flow. The visual shows this, and the open switch, allows for discussion of what the battery does. 

I often ask prompting questions, more or a less in this order:

1. What are the blue circles representing? 
2. What charge do they have?
3. Are they "flowing" or moving in this image? How do you know? 
4. What if the switch was closed, what would then happen? 
5. What do you notice about the amount of current before and after the component? 

This section of the lesson of the lesson attempts to do to things. Firstly have the students acknowledge that their origional think was indeed a misconception and, secondly,  present them with plausible and intelligible. Many students "get it" once they see the image and begin to articulate why they are wrong. 

I often go back to the origional question and ask who wants to change their mind. This is an importamt classroom cultural moment as praising this encourages thinking in what Doug Lemov would describe as a "culture of error". 

This image is a screen shot from the wonderful phet simulation. At this point the students are in now in need of a succinct and clear teacher summary of the correct answer, the simulation provides the perfect backdrop to this. 

Strategy 3: Realness.(Where possible)

In this lesson the students would then build a simple series circuit and measure the current at two points to show that this phenomena is real. This is also another exposure to this idea.

Strategy 4 Multiple exposure (within the lesson).

The lesson has a review based upon another model of current, comparing the bike chain to current and circuits. 

Students very quickly work out through discussion that the pedals represent the battery, the back wheel would be the component and the chain the wires. With minimal prompting they start to associate the links associate the links with the charge. following this further insights into the behaviour of current become clear. The links are evenly spaced; they dont move until they are pushed; they do not jump around the chainring (battery) if there is no pushing. This concrete example ( and therefore more plausible) helps students see their new knowledge as fruitful and leading to new understanding. 

Strategy 5: Multiple exposures (across lessons). 

As this topic develops other concepts must be added such as potential difference and resistance. These are opportunities to build on what hopefully will have become prior knowledge. A good example from future lessons is this classic teaching image. In the image the current is labelled as Amp and needs the push from the Potential difference (volt) to get moving. 

Strategy 6: Feedback.

Students are asked to describe in writing the relationship between the current, potential difference and resistance that is encaspsulated within the picture. They are asked to use the leave a line between each one that they write.  This provides a space where they can reflect on what they have written correct wrong ideas and add missing ones in the light of a model example; class discussion; teacher prompts; or teacher written feedback. 

A copy of the lesson resources are available here