Intuitive ontologies and the possibilities for instruction

I was recently reminded of a set of very influential papers by M. T. H. Chi, J. D. Slotta, and their collaborators (because I reviewed a paper that relied on that work). These papers have a lot to offer the Energy Project in that Chi and Slotta see ontological categorization as being key to understanding physics concepts.  They make a stronger claim than that, which is that ontological mis-categorization is at the core of novices’ difficulties with many concepts in physics -- in fact, in their view, it's one of the key features that distinguishes novices from experts, period.

This is in some ways a fantastically progressive position, at least for the 1990s when (IMO) it was peaking.  The claim is that the difference between novices and experts is not in the quantity of information in their brains, nor in the development of "abilities" like memory or "intelligence," but rather in how the information we all have is organized.  I am in this school of thought.  I also relate strongly to the ontological categorization issue, of course, since one focus of the Energy Project is to help people develop a particular ontology for energy.  Part of the deal, in our opinion, is that it's going to be very helpful for people to model energy as a certain kind of thing.  This general issue has been dear to physics education researchers pre-Energy Project, as well:  for example, we've considered it a key problem when students talk about objects having force or giving force to other objects, apparently thinking of force as a substance, whereas we think of force as an interaction.  Chi and Slotta are the primary figures responsible for this general idea in the literature (for example, they are referenced extensively in the expert-novice chapter of How People Learn) and we should all know about them.

Chi, M.T.H., and Slotta, J.D. (1993). The ontological coherence of intuitive physics. Cognition and Instruction, 10, 249–260.
Slotta, J.D., Chi, M.T.H., and Joram, E. (1995). Assessing students’ misclassifications of physics concepts: An ontological basis for conceptual change. Cognition and Instruction, 13, 373–400.
Chi, M. T. H. (2005). Commonsense conceptions of emergent processes: Why some misconceptions are robust. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 14, 161–199.
Slotta, J., and Chi, M. T. H. (2006). Helping students understand challenging topics in science through ontology training. Cognition and Instruction, 24, 261–289.

Important and valuable as this work is, there are parts of it that I strongly disagree with.

• Chi and Slotta assert that novices misunderstand concepts such as heat, light, and electric current as being matter-like substances, to their detriment, whereas experts know them to be emergent processes.  This doesn't fit my experience of either novices or experts.  In the case of energy, for example, it's we experts who think of it as a substance (at least sometimes), and that thinking is productive, not problematic.  (Chi was invited to discuss this issue with the PER community at an AAPT meeting once, but it wasn't a helpful conversation.)
• Chi and Slotta lay out a hierarchical tree of ontologies in which "matter" and "process" are on different branches, and assert that these categories are cognitively mutually exclusive.  This theory of "ontological distinctness" is based on (1) the idea that entities in the world are strictly ontologically distinct (a dog cannot be an hour long) and (2) the observation that novices have a very hard time changing ontological categories.  If you mistakenly think of light or electric current as being a matter-like substance, you are separated from experts by a cognitive abyss:

Unfortunately, once an ontological commitment is made with respect to a concept, it is difficult through any stages of mental transformation to change one's fundamental conception from substance to process... Thus ontologically misattributed concepts would require an extraordinary process of conceptual change. (Slotta and Chi, 2006, p. 263)

• Chi and Slotta use the theory of ontological distinctness to account for the persistence of student difficulties generally.  In their view, novices can't think the way experts do because their cognitive structure is different.  (For example, they lack ontological categories that we have, such as "emergent process.")  They go even further:  Because novice cognition is different, it is “not possible to refine or develop intuitive knowledge to the point that it becomes the veridical physics knowledge."

Unfortunately, that third bullet has been very influential.  Chi and Slotta are pillars of the perspective that novice thinking is fundamentally flawed.  The educational implications of this perspective are pretty direct:  the job of instruction is to prevent students from thinking in the ways that they're used to and give them something worthwhile to think instead, because it's not possible to build right thinking on a wrong foundation.

Teachers should not try to “bridge the gap” between students’ misconceptions and the target instructional material, as there is no tenable pathway between distinct ontological conceptions. For example, students who understand “force” as a property of an object cannot come gradually to shift this conception until it is thought of as a process of interaction between two objects. Indeed, students’ learning may actually be hindered if they are required to relate scientifically normative instruction to their existing conceptualizations. (Slotta & Chi, 2006, p. 286)

Recently the Journal of the Learning Sciences published what I think is a pretty ringing critique of Chi and Slotta’s framework, assembled by my former colleagues at Maryland.  Here is an excerpt from the abstract:

Gupta, A., Hammer, D., & Redish, E. F. (2010). The case for dynamic models of learners' ontologies in physics. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 19(3), 285-321.

[We argue] that expert and novice reasoning often and productively traverses ontological categories. We cite examples from everyday, classroom, and professional contexts to illustrate this. We agree with Chi and Slotta that instruction should attend to learners’ ontologies, but we find that these ontologies are better understood as dynamic and context dependent rather than as static constraints. To promote one ontological description in physics instruction, as suggested by Slotta and Chi, could undermine novices’ access to productive cognitive resources that they bring to their studies and inhibit their transition to the dynamic ontological flexibility required of experts.

Equally exciting is that JLS also published Slotta’s defense of Chi’s framework, and a response to that defense. It's quite a spirited exchange.

Slotta, J. D. (2010). In defense of Chi's ontological incompatibility hypothesis. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 20(1), 152-162.
Hammer, D., Gupta, A., & Redish, E. F. (2011). On static and dynamic intuitive ontologies. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 20(1), 163-168.

Part of why I think this conversation is exciting is that it might reinvigorate questions about the nature of student ideas and the possibilities for instruction.  Gupta, Hammer, and Redish assert that both experts’ and novices’ ontologies are dynamic and context-dependent; that both experts and novices can, do, and should use substance metaphors for energy productively; and that fruitful instruction takes advantage of novices’ ontological flexibility.  Their work is a new challenge to the “misconceptions” cognitive theory that has been debated in JLS since the 1990s:

Smith, J., diSessa, A., & Roschelle, J. (1993/1994). Misconceptions reconceived:  A constructivist analysis of knowledge in transition. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(2), 115-163.

I think part of the significance of all this for the Energy Project is for us to be aware that the issues of teaching and learning that we're grappling with go all the way to the top.