Dear colleagues,
We want to design a questionnaire to measure teachers' self-efficacy beliefs concerning Pedagocical Content Knowledge. One sub-domain of PCK is students' misconceptions in a certain subject (Politics/Civic Education and History in our case)
a) Is there any empirical evidence that has identified typical misconceptions in those subjects?
b) If there is not, what misconceptions have you encountered in your teaching?
As always, your help is much appreciated!
Differentiated concepts between teachers Vs students can be:
1. different views to see a war, eg cnn vs persian news
2. mobile devise contents in student phones vs screen knowledge from teacher's speech desk
Dear Grace
Thank you for your answer. I was more looking for misconceptions among students concerning a certain topic.
A very banal example would be that Geography students think that the sun orbits the Earth and not the other way round (geocentric vs. heliocentric).
We can all think of these misconceptions, but I am looking for actual empirical proof and have so far been unable to find any.
Thanks
Marcel
Dear Marcel,
Very intersting question. One explanation for misconceptions in geography is that geography is often taught as part of social studies curriculum, which includes a wide range of topics from geography, history, citizenship, and economics. In this case, some students associate geography topics with other social studies topics.
Examples include weather vs. climate and landscapes (mountain and plateau). The same example about the sun as a star.
The following articles touched your topic:
Al-Nofli, M. A. (2014). Omani students’ definitions of geography. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 23(2), 166-178.
Catling, S. (2001). English primary schoolchildren’s definitions of geography.International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education,10(4), 363–378.
Hopwood, N. (2004). Pupils’ conceptions of geography: Towards an improved understanding. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education,13(4), 348–361.
Dear Mohammed,
your insight and your sources are much appreciated. Weather and climate are often (puposfully?) mixed up when it comes to debates on climate change. I will take a look at them and browse the journal as welll.
Thanks again.
I don't know of any empirical research unveiling misconceptions, and think the sources above are helpful; however, I do think creating an instrument that might do so would be quite unique. In one sense you might be able to look at some practice tests of ETS' content Praxis exams in those subject areas, recreate and validate them, administer the test to students, and then analyze the incorrect answers to in part determine misconceptions, especially if the "fooler" or "spoiler" responses are indicative of misconceptions (i.e. the difference between weather and climate).
Dear Marcel,
The attached articles are helpful sources to develop the instrument.
Clarification of Selected Misconceptions in physical geography
Children's Misconceptions in primary science
Omani twelfth grade students’ most common misconceptions in chemistry
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