1. Before beginning instruction on any new topic, teachers need to know their students' preconceptions because learning, and therefore instruction itself, varies depending on whether preconceptions agree with the concepts being taught or contradict those concepts.
2. Understand your students' preconceptions
2.1. Anchoring conceptions
2.1.1. Consistent with concepts in the assigned curriculum
2.2. Alternative conceptions or misconceptions
2.2.1. Students' preconceptions are inconsistent with the concepts being taught.
2.3. Reasons that teachers need to figure out students' preconceptions before they begin instruction on a new topic
2.3.1. Learning and teaching vary considerably,
2.3.2. Student learning and achievement can increase when teachers better understand their students' thinking about a concept.
2.3.3. Though misconceptions generally pose obstacles to learning, they also offer some value to the learning experience.
2.3.4. Subtopic
3. Do's and don'ts
3.1. Do's:
3.1.1. Pretests
3.1.2. Try to learn how students are going about solving problems or arriving at their answers.
3.1.3. Use the technique of "differential diagnosis"
3.1.4. Use the technique of difficulty factors assessment (DFA)
3.1.5. Systematically vary important features of the problem
3.1.6. Give “implicit-confidence” tests
3.1.7. Administer a categorization/sorting task.
3.1.8. Use student memory/recall of problems and definitions as a window into their thinking.
3.2. Don'ts:
3.2.1. Do not jump too quickly
3.2.2. Do not stick with or lock onto only one type of response behavior a student may display.
3.2.3. Do not make a diagnosis about students'logic, reasoning or thinking processes on the basis of their performance on one problem or one kind of problem.
4. By Claudia Alonso Castro
5. Pretests and assessment
5.1. How to use information gathered from pre-instruction quizzes
5.1.1. Analyze correct responses
5.1.2. Analyze errors by looking for patterns.
5.2. Assessing how students are arriving at their answers
5.2.1. Information on student strategies can be gleaned in several ways
5.2.1.1. Use students’ own verbal self reports.
5.2.1.2. Analyze students’ overt behavior, such as their written work and journal writing
5.2.1.3. Facilitate class discussions designed to elicit student misconceptions, challenge inaccuracies and emphasize a correct conceptual framework throughout instruction
6. FAQs
6.1. Do all students hold preconceptions?
6.2. Are some students more likely to adjust preconceptions than others?
6.3. Are misconceptions common?
6.4. Are there typical misconceptions that occur for different subject areas?
7. When do these recommendations work?
7.1. Age
7.1.1. Most of the strategies discussed here are general techniques that should work for students in grades K-12.
7.2. Individual differences
7.2.1. For students with delayed language development, for those who are learning English as their second language
7.2.2. For students who are not verbally adept