Learning about forces: simulating the outcomes of pupils' misconceptions

Finegold, Menahem; Gorsky, Paul

doi:10.1007/bf00048344

Cited by 23 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The anomalous data are intended to cause students to become dissatisfied with their current theories, which cannot account for the anomalous data, and to adopt instead the target scientific theory, which successfully explains the data (e.g., Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982). Educational researchers who have advocated using anomalous data to spur students to change their preinstructional theories include Alvermann and Hynd (1989); Anderson (1977); Brown and Clement (1992); Champagne, Gunstone, and Klopfer (1985); Collins (1977);diSessa (1982); Dreyfus, Jungwirth, and Eliovitch (1990); Finegold and Gorsky (1988); Hewson and Hewson (1983); Hewson (1981); Inagaki (1981); Johsua and Dupin (1987); Minstrell (1989); Neale, Smith, and Johnson (1990); Nussbaum and Novick (1982); Pines and West (1986); Posner et al (1982); Roth (1990); Roth, Anderson, and Smith (1987); Rowell and Dawson (1983); Wang and Andre (1991); Watson and Konicek (1990); and White and Frederiksen (1990). The particulars of these approaches vary widely, and the anomalous evidence itself is presented in different ways, sometimes through laboratory work or live demonstrations, sometimes through computers, and sometimes through discussions.…”

Section: The Role Of Anomalous Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Anomalous Data in Knowledge Acquisition: A Theoretical Framework and Implications for Science Instruction

Chinn¹,

Brewer

1993

Review of Educational Research

993

351

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Understanding how science students respond to anomalous data is essential to understanding knowledge acquisition in science classrooms. In this report, we present a detailed analysis of the ways in which scientists and science students respond to anomalous data. We postulate that there are seven distinct forms of response to anomalous data, only one of which is to accept the data and change theories. The other six responses involve discounting the data in various ways in order to protect the preinstructional theory. We analyze the factors that influence which of these seven forms of response a scientist or student will choose, giving special attention to the factors that make theory change more likely. Finally, we discuss the implications of our framework for science instruction.Anomalous Data -2 THE ROLE OF ANOMALOUS DATA IN KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND IMPLICATIONS FOR SCIENCE INSTRUCTIONThis report addresses an issue that is crucial for understanding how people learn science and how to improve science instruction: How do students respond when they encounter scientific information that contradicts their current theories' about the physical world? In other words, how do students respond when their current beliefs about the physical world conflict with the information presented during science instruction?This issue is crucial for two reasons. The first is that encountering contradictory information is a very common occurrence when one is learning science. Science students' preinstructional beliefs about the natural world often conflict sharply with many of the accepted scientific theories they are taught in school, and this is true across a wide variety of domains within biology, chemistry, and physics (for reviews, see Carey, 1985;Champagne, Klopfer, & Gunstone, 1982;Confrey, 1990;Driver & Easley, 1978; Driver, Guesne, & Tiberghien, 1985;Eylon & Linn, 1988;Osborne & Freyberg, 1985;Perkins & Simmons, 1988;Roth, 1990). Thus, the encounter with contradictory information is at the heart of knowledge acquisition in science.The second reason why understanding how students respond to contradictory information is crucial for science education is that students typically resist giving up their preinstructional beliefs. Instead of abandoning or modifying their preinstructional beliefs in the face of new, conflicting data and ideas, students often staunchly maintain old ideas and reject or distort new ideas. For instance, some children who are told that the earth is round preserve their preinstructional belief that the earth is flat by concluding that the earth is disc shaped (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992). Similarly, children can spend days or weeks studying photosynthesis and yet persist in their preinstructional belief that plants get their food from the soil (Anderson & Smith, 1984). And a number of researchers have found that many young adults go through high school and university physics courses without ever giving up their pre-Newtonian views of motion (e.g., Champagne, Klopfer, & Anderson...

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Section: The Role Of Anomalous Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Anomalous Data in Knowledge Acquisition: A Theoretical Framework and Implications for Science Instruction

Chinn¹,

Brewer

1993

Review of Educational Research

993

351

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“…Inanimate bodies can exert force, e.g. like a stone or a chair (Finegold and Gorksy 1988;Hestenes et al 1992). 2.…”

Section: Force Interactions-an Instructional Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Others have designed and put into practice studies of the process of conceptual change through the teaching of the Three Laws of Newton (Tao and Gunstone 1999a;Savinainen and Scott 2002a). Recent years have seen the development of a new research trend, in which efforts are made to use educational software for the teaching of force interaction, as well as the Three Laws of Newton, taking into account the findings of the above mentioned research (Finegold and Gorksy 1988;Gorksy and Finegold 1994;Tao and Gunstone 1999b;Yeo et al 1999;Kolokotronis and Solomonidou 2003;Pol et al 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Educational software for improving learning aspects of Newton’s Third Law for student teachers

2009

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In this paper, we present the design, development, implementation and evaluation of educational software "Newton-3", aiming at the learning of Newton's Third Law by student-teachers who are not Physics majors. We describe the theoretical issues of our teaching approach and the various software tasks that we designed in order to promote students' understanding. Specifically, the software is designed for the teaching of gravitational and electrostatic interactions between two distant bodies at rest. It is a web-based application and runs on a simple web browser with Macromedia Flash plug-in installed. The development of software and its integration into teaching-learning sequence is based on three main characteristics: the range of contexts in which the concept of force interaction applies, in the specification of the concept, and in an appropriate teaching learning environment (IDRF). We trialled the software on two groups of 8 primary school and 8 pre-school student-teachers, for 3 teaching periods, in the School of Education of our University. The research results indicate that the implementation was effective as the majority of the teacher-students improved their own knowledge concerning the existence and representation of gravitational and electrostatic interactions. An interesting result reveals that student-teachers have difficulty in perceiving the equality of magnitudes of action and reaction forces. This problem seems to be overcome after the teaching of the Inverse square law.

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“…Besides, the point of view that action always overcomes reaction is a common reason for the failure of accepting the principle that the third-law force pair has the same magnitude (Grimellini-Tomasini, Pecori-Balandi, Pacca, & Villani, 1993). Finding in some other studies reveals that students have problem in comprehending that objects have the same magnitude of force as the opponent in the following situation: inanimate bodies (Finegold & Gorksy, 1988;Hestenes, Wells, & Swackhamer, 1992), stationary bodies (Terry et al, 1985;Tao & Gunstone 1999a), distant bodies (Kolokotronis & Solomonidou, 2003), and so on.…”

Section: Contribution Of This Paper To the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ed., 11(3), [589][590][591][592][593][594][595][596][597][598][599] regardless of different contextual features of the situation (Savinainen, Scott, & Viiri, 2005). For example, inanimate bodies (Finegold & Gorksy, 1988;Hestenes, Wells, & Swackhamer, 1992), stationary bodies (Terry et al, 1985;Tao & Gunstone, 1999a), and distant bodies (Kolokotronis & Solomonidou, 2003) can exert and be exerted a force. The ontological aspect concerns the nature of the force (Spyrtou, Hatzikraniotis, & Kariotoglou, 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Students’ Understanding on Newton’s Third Law in Identifying the Reaction Force in Gravity Interactions

Zhou

Zhang

Xiao

2015

EURASIA J MATH SCI T

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In the past three decades, previous researches showed that students had various misconceptions of Newton's Third Law. The present study focused on students' difficulties in identifying the third-law force pair in gravity interaction situations. An instrument involving contexts with gravity and non-gravity associated interactions was designed and conducted among students in junior secondary school, senior high school and university. The finding revealed that students in all grades did statistically worse in gravity interaction contexts and had general difficulties in distinguishing interaction forces and balanced forces. However, students improved their reasoning on third-law force pair with the increase of grade level irrespective of contexts. Special difficulties for junior secondary school students in understanding gravity interaction were also addressed. It is important to emphasize that the educational contexts of gravity interactions should be paid more attention to.

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Learning about forces: simulating the outcomes of pupils' misconceptions

Abstract: We have developed a computer program which simulates the outcomes of pupils' perceptions regarding the forces at play in static equilibrium.

Cited by 23 publications

References 9 publications

The Role of Anomalous Data in Knowledge Acquisition: A Theoretical Framework and Implications for Science Instruction

The Role of Anomalous Data in Knowledge Acquisition: A Theoretical Framework and Implications for Science Instruction

Educational software for improving learning aspects of Newton’s Third Law for student teachers

Students’ Understanding on Newton’s Third Law in Identifying the Reaction Force in Gravity Interactions

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