It is important to start the students’ education regarding the principles of science by identifying possible misconceptions and preconceptions that they can have. The reason is that children begin to develop their visions of the world around them while referring to individual experiences and certain notions (Driver, Rushworth, Squires, & Wood-Robinson, 2005). The problem is in the fact that such developed ideas and schemes often differ from scientific knowledge, and these misconceptions or preconceptions can influence the process of studying science.
If children find the certain support for their wrong ideas about natural processes in their everyday experiences or they focus on the wrong interpretation of processes, such situations can influence students’ visions and the process of development of scientific knowledge even at school. Furthermore, it is important to identify misconceptions and preconceptions before teaching the principles of science because wrong visions can influence students’ further analysis of natural processes. Thus, formal learning plays a key role in building scientific knowledge.
The strategies that can be used to elicit misconceptions or preconceptions of children regarding science include demonstrations, experiments, discussions of processes with peers, and discussions of processes and phenomena with adults, including parents and teachers. In their practice, teachers can use demonstrations and experiments to initiate the discussion of certain processes and phenomena, determine students’ misconceptions, and explain the nature of experiments (Driver et al., 2005). Therefore, before explaining the scientific concept or beginning the experiment, the teacher should ask students regarding the expected processes, as well as their nature, to conclude on the presence of possible misconceptions.
Much attention should be paid to children’s discussions of observed objects and processes with peers. Adults need to focus on children’s ideas to identify what misconceptions or preconceptions influence their visions. Furthermore, while initiating discussions in the class, teachers can ask students to clarify their particular notions and ideas to overcome certain gaps in knowledge. These strategies are important to elicit misconceptions or preconceptions that should be identified before starting the study of objects, processes, and phenomena in the context of formal learning.
Children are inclined to develop many misconceptions related to the ideas of living, nutrition, and growth. For instance, while classifying objects into living and non-living, children choose criteria that cannot be related to the aspect of being alive directly. As a result, many children develop misconceptions that objects or beings can be discussed as living or alive if they move (Driver et al., 2005). Therefore, clouds and cars can be regarded by children as living beings. While discussing the concept of nutrition, children also demonstrate many misconceptions related to the idea of feeding.
Children often think that plants absorb the sunlight because it is food for them. Also, young children can assume that when they eat a certain food, it vanishes. Moreover, they also think about food chains as lines or pyramids. Many children do not understand the cyclic nature of food chains. Young persons’ visions regarding the concept of growth are also important to be discussed because many misconceptions are associated with these notions. Thus, children are inclined to support the idea that the growth of humans and the growth of plants have similar features. Therefore, describing how plants grow, children often use terms related to human growth and development.
Reference
Driver, R., Rushworth, P., Squires, A., & Wood-Robinson, V. (2005). Making sense of secondary science: Research into children’s ideas. New York, NY: Routledge.