Misconceptions vs Scientific Truth: What Every Teacher Needs to Know

This video forms part of a longer course on teaching primary school science which you can access on Udemy. This lecture looks at how to identify and deal with student misconceptions. Access the full course at: https://www.udemy.com/course/teaching... Pupils do not come into school as an empty vessel, ready to be filled with science knowledge, rather they come with their own sets of ideas and concepts that they will have built to explain how the world around them works. This is a constructivist view of learning, drawing on the work of psychologists such as Piaget and Vygotsky. A misconception can be defined as a view that does not fully coincide with the scientific view. Often these existing ideas are produced through informal play or through watching films and television shows. These ideas are at odds with the accepted science, and they can be difficult to change or reform and become a source of misconceptions when met in formal science lessons (Allen, 2019). In many cases pupils can hold both the ‘misconception’ and the scientific idea at the same time and may use different ways of explaining events in different situations (DFE, 2008). Some misconceptions may persist despite teachers’ best efforts. Even when presented with new evidence pupils may modify it to fit into their existing model.