Co-development of Conceptual Understanding and Critical Attitude: Analyzing texts on radiocarbon dating

Abstract

This research documents the impact of a teaching interview aimed at developing a critical attitude in students, and focused on a particular topic: radiocarbon dating. This teaching interview is designed to have students react to limited written explanations of the phenomenon under study, and to express their possible frustration or intellectual satisfaction in relation to these texts. We aim to document the possible link between students' developing conceptual understanding of a topic and their ability to express their frustration when presented with very incomplete explanations, or their intellectual satisfaction when presented with complete explanation. As a side product we intend to observe some of their a priori ideas concerning this topic. Ten teaching interviews conducted with fourth-year university students were recorded, transcribed and coded. Beyond a series of results concerning students' a priori understanding of the domain, the analysis of the interviews suggests that, when students are presented with texts of increasing completeness and discuss these with the interviewer, their critical reactions evolve in time in a very specific way. We propose a tentative model for this co-evolution of student conceptual command and critical stance. The discussion bears on possible interpretations for the "anesthesia of judgment" observed in most students at the beginning of the interview, and for a few of them throughout the discussion. Keeping in mind the "competence vs concepts" current alternative, the conditions that seem to free students' critical potential are analysed in relation to their evolving command of the topic and their degree of intellectual satisfaction.

Activation of a critical attitude in prospective teachers: From research investigations to guidelines for teacher education

“…Similarly, any divergence between results across different topics would pose useful questions about the contextual dependence, validity, or complementarity of our results. As stated, the chosen topics were the hot air balloon [9], radiocarbon dating [10], how a survival blanket works [11], molecular interactions and osmosis [12], capillary ascension [13]. All were assumed to be at once nonobvious and partly accessible to the participants, an assumption that is compatible with our results.…”

“…The goal of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, we intend to synthesize those of these studies that are already published under a detailed format: The topics were the hot air balloon [9], radiocarbon dating [10], how a survival blanket works [11], molecular interactions and osmosis [12], and capillary ascension [13]. Consistently with our research goal, each of these studies includes a detailed and, to a greater or lesser extent, novel content analysis; a specific method for conducting and processing the interviews; and detailed findings concerning the interplay between conceptual and critical development in advanced students.…”

Codevelopment of conceptual understanding and critical attitude: toward a systemic analysis of the survival blanket

“…It is not claimed here that higher conceptual achievement necessarily or always correlates with better activation of critical faculty; we have already noted reported cases of 'anesthesia of judgment' ( [29], [30], [31]), in which experts were uncritical of incomplete or incoherent explanations despite having all the requisite knowledge to analyse them. These cases suggest that reaching a threshold of comprehension may be a necessary condition for enacting a critical faculty but not a sufficient one.…”

Developing critical analysis of explanations in physics teachers: which direction to take?

“…Like a model, an explanation is based on a selection of relevant aspects of the situation and on hypotheses; beyond that, however, an explanation consists of arguments that are logically organised. For instance, explaining radio-carbon dating without explaining why the atmosphere's [ 14 C/ 12 C] composition is stable over time is not a problem of inappropriate modelling but of incomplete argumentation [19].…”