Teacher awareness of student alternate conceptions about rotational motion and gravity

Abstract

Twenty high school physics teachers were interviewed to determine their awareness of student alternate conceptions in the areas of force and gravity. The teachers were also asked to indicate preferred teaching strategies dealing with alternate conceptions. Teacher predictions of student responses were compared to alternate conceptions held by 315 grade‐nine students and published findings from other research studies. Edmonton students were found to possess nearly every alternate conception identified in previous research, in similar proportions. A few previously undocumented alternate conceptions were also identified. At times, students were observed to arrive at the currently acceptable conclusion by using alternate conceptions. The high school physics teachers, as a group, identified nearly all the alternate conceptions used by the students. However, individual teachers were generally aware of only a few alternate conceptions, with fully one third of them possessing alternate conceptions themselves in one or more of the tasks. The teachers were also unable to predict with any accuracy the different types of student responses or the proportion of students choosing each alternative. The teaching strategies outlined by the teachers would be considered only partially effective according to current research findings.

Pre-Service Science Teachers’ PCK: Inconsistency of Pre-Service Teachers’ Predictions and Student Learning Difficulties in Newton’s Third Law

“…However, the existence of these two misconceptions was neglected by most pre-service science teachers. Our findings support previous studies where teachers are found to have unawareness of students' misconceptions which they have learned (Berg & Brouwer, 1991;Hashweh, 1987). More explicitly, as another research reported, pre-service teachers tended to make incorrect judgments about students' likely misconceptions (Halim & Meerah, 2002).…”

“…Then, forward amendments about pre-service science teachers' knowledge of student learning difficulties should be put by expert teachers. As pointed out in the previous researches, teachers need to be made aware of the teaching strategies that cope with student learning difficulties (Berg & Brouwer, 1991) and instructional strategies to overcome student learning difficulties could significantly add to the evolution of preservice science teachers' PCK (Shulman, 1986 ;Halim & Meerah, 2002;Driel et al 1998; Demirdogen, Aydin, & Tarkin, 2015).…”

Explanations of prospective middle school mathematics teachers for potential misconceptions on the concept of symmetry

“…The studies by Aydın-Güç, & Hacısalihoğlu-Karadeniz (2016), Berg & Brouwer (1991), Smith & Neale (1989) and Son (2006) concluded similar results. The Updated Secondary School Mathematics Teaching Program (MEB, 2013) anticipates that students make use of concrete experiences, intuitions, informal information that they have in their daily life in order to support conceptual learning.…”

Untitled

“…Do teachers, however, hold the accepted scientific view of the force concept themselves and are they, in fact, aware of their students' alternative conceptual frameworks? Berg and Brouwer (1991) carried out a study on Canadian high school physics teachers awareness of students alternate conceptions about rotational motion and gravity. They found that the teachers were mainly unaware of students' alternate conceptions about gravity.…”