Possible Causes of Science Misconceptions

Before students have constructed scientific understandings they will use a variety of strategies for explaining their world. The strategies they use are limited by their development and the number and kinds of experiences they have had.

Developmental

Youn children have not constructed logical reasoning beyond direct observable comparisons. Which means these children -

Use their perceptual senses, rather than logic, to reason through problems. This usually is a basic form of visual spatial reasoning similar to comparing one picture snap shots to each other without the use of perspective, scale or any other constructed reasoning - logic.

Examples - Pennies are worth more than a dime because they are bigger or there are more and only one dime. Five blocks together are less than five blocks spread out, one wire is smaller because it is bent...

To be able to reason more accurately children must construct mental structures such as those needed to conserve. Which means they must be able to do the following.

1. Decenter (center focus on one feature and ignore others),
2. Use reversibility (able to see that some actions can be undone),
3. See transformations (able to see change as an infinite series),
4. Stop the use of egocentric thinking, (all actions are related to them) and
5. Stop the use of transductive reasoning (faulty reasoning)

Experiental limitations

Experience provide a virtual dataBase of information and ways of using that information to explaing the world. The more experiences the greater the information each person has to acces when trying to explain their world. In science that centers on observational evidence, processes for better observations, ways to organize information, and ways to reasoning about the information to create explanations and models.

Experiences that often lead to scientific misconceptions can be derived from the following experiences.

• Animistic or Animism - speaking as if natural phenomena, living and non living things are alive or have a soul.
• Anthropomorphic or Anthropomorphism - speaking as if natural phenomena, living and non human living organisms have human motivations, characteristics, or behaviors.
• Artificialism - speak as if a human created something not nature or something natural.
• Social - experiences in the world with family, friends, neighbors, TV, mass media, school, libraries, museums, shopping malls,
• Oral language
• Written language
• Vocabulary may include misuse of words.
• Anthropomorphism, (animism, artificialism) giving nonliving objects, animals, or natural phenomenon human or living characteristics
• Metaphorically - use of a metaphor - The sun is like a fire.
• Episodic - explanations that relate to an idea or to a previous event or a particular context, but are not explanatory or causal.