Monday, August 15, 2011

What's wrong with Misconceptions?

At lunch today, we had a great conversation about what's wrong with the word "misconceptions." I don't want to encourage a dogmatic avoidance of the word, but I do want to get people to think about why it may be problematic. I suggested an article by Andy Elby about the experimental implications of using a misconceptions theory or a resources theory as a good place to start. Here is the article:

Elby, A. (2000). What students’ learning of representations tells us about constructivism. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 19, 481-502.

While the whole article is interesting, the first two sections are the most important for addressing the issues we were discussing today.

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