astro300_f14:day10

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====== AY 375 Fall 2014: Tenth Day Plan ======

Today we will talk about misconceptions in science, how they arise, and what we can do as instructors to counter them.

====General Takeaways====

   - Students do come into a class with misconceptions related to the course material and how to learn/approach it.
   - Thinking about misconceptions as a misapplication of student resources can be useful in helping to address misconceptions.
   - Students not only have conceptual resources but epistemological ones as well. Classes and sections should work on developing both the concepts and the process of "thinking like a physicist."

=====Midsemester Eval Discussion  (10 minutes)=====

Open the floor up for general questions and sharing about how sections are going. Some questions include:
   * What did you learn from your midsemester evals? Anything surprising? 
   * What do you plan to change about your teaching in the remaining sections? 


=====Experienced GSI visit - Paul M. from Political Science (40 minutes) =====


=====Someone does board work question (10 minutes) =====

=====Misconceptions (50 minutes) =====

- Opening Question: Can you define a “misconception” ? Why do students develop misconceptions? 

- Screening of "A Private Universe"

- Discussion questions:

   - What were the main points of the video?  Did they surprise you or have you had similar experiences in section?
        - Students come with their own ideas and preconceptions of scientific material.  They hold on to those preconceptions unless they are clearly addressed in class and shown to be incorrect (and even then some of their preconceptions remain).  
        - Direct instruction (“this is the answer”) does not lead to learning. 
        - Hands-on activities can be helpful.  Diagrams can be so easily misleading. 
   - Does this help you re-define your definition of a misconception? 
        - Students construct new knowledge from old knowledge, but the application is where the problems usually arise. 
   - Do misconceptions arise from holding erroneous facts in your head? 
        - No, typically correct ideas are applied to incorrect situations (e.g., closer is hotter being applied incorrectly to the seasons).
   - If you, like the teacher in the video, became aware of these misconceptions your students have, how would you address them? 
      - Hammer suggests that misconceptions can be addressed through “bridging analogies”, where ideas that students have that DO align with the physicist’s understanding can be used to bridge conceptual understanding. 
      - Make it an opportunity to engage your students in the scientific process, advancing a hypothesis and trying to prove/disprove it, showing how THEY can determine which resources are applicable to this situation and which are not. 
      - There are also epistemological resources that students invoke. These are resources on how students incorporate and utilize conceptual resources. Some examples: invention (“I made it up!”), inferences/logical connections (“I know you have a present for me because I saw you hide something under your coat!”)  .
      - The basic ideas are already there, but now you must refine these ideas to jive with the physicist’s understanding. But that's not enough. We then have to make sure students have means of using these concepts correctly ("thinking like a physicist"). 
      - Benefits of "messing around in science" are clear. Self-reflection is necessary. 
   - How do we incorporate these exercises of metacognitive learning into a course that is already saturated with conceptual material? 
   
- Alternative / extra: demo: sprinkle pepper in basin of water. Drop toothpick dipped in soap into water. Pepper will flee from the toothpick. Ask class to explain why. (Reason: soap reduces surface tension of water, so pepper is pulled towards the un-soapy water). 
       - What are the conceptual resources you are drawing from? 
       - What are the epistemological resources here? 
       - What misconceptions might be created by attempting to explain this? (e.g, the soap "takes up space" on the water and pushes the pepper away -- misusing a conservation principle)


=====Homework for Next Time=====
   - If you have not yet analyzed your mid-semester evaluations, shoot me an email with your summary sometime this week. 
   - Read Douglas Duncan's "Six Ways to Discourage Learning" for next week. Easily found online. 
   - I never checked your short teaching logs. Let's check those next week.
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