Chapter 6, page 67
To provide an initial overview of the five types of knowledge summarized in Table 6.1, let’s
consider a classroom example. A teacher—Jeanine—is beginning a unit on the living things, kingdoms,
and the taxonomy of the plant and animal kingdoms. This is a topic that may appear in middle school, in
elementary school, or in both; Jeanine is a seventh-grade teacher. She knows that each of the five types of
conceptions will be held by at least some students in her classes, and she knows that she will need to
design instruction that will take these various kinds of conceptions into account.
The first kind of conception is consistent conceptions. Jeanine knows that some of her students have
read many books about animals and therefore already have many conceptions, most of which are accurate,
about the animal kingdom. These students’ prior conceptions are highly consistent with what they are
learning. These students will find it easy to learn additional information that fits well with what they have
already learned. Their prior conceptions will give them a solid framework to understand and remember the
new information.
Second, Jeanine knows that some of her students have conceptions that are inconsistent or
incompatible with what they are learning. These are called alternative conceptions because they are the
students’ own ideas about the world, different from the ideas they are learning. They are the student’s own
alternative perspective on the world. For example, some of Jeanine’s students have the alternative
conception that fire is alive because fire seems to meet all of the defining characteristics of living things (it
moves, it uses energy, it seems to reproduce, and so on). This is of course inconsistent with the adult and
scientific view that denies that fire is alive. When these students are learning about living things, some of
them persist in believing that fire is alive, even if Jeanine tells them that it is not alive. In addition, their
idea that fire is alive may interfere with efforts to learn other ideas about reproduction or growth. When
Jeanine teaches students about living things, she must devise ways of teaching that will address this
alternative conception, because she does not want students to leave the unit still thinking that fire is alive.
Third, many of Jeanine’s students also have conceptions that are typical of novices—that is,
students who have immature ideas that are very different from expert ideas. One hallmark of novice
conceptions is that they are organized by how things look on the surface—that is, how they look on the
outside, not the inside. Thus, students think that octopuses and starfish must be closely related because
they look similar on the outside; they both have lots of legs. Because Jeanine knows that many of her
students will focus on such surface similarities, she must help students to think more in terms of internal
characteristics, such as the fact that octopuses have brains and a central cavity for internal organs,
whereas starfish do not. Novices need to be directed to think about these internal, less obvious
characteristics.
The fourth type of prior conception consists of conceptual resources. Conceptual resources are
student ideas that teachers can build on to help them understand new ideas that are different from their
current ideas. Although students might hold alternative conceptions or novice conceptions that can
interfere with learning, they might also have ideas that can be used as the foundation to help them
understand difficult new ideas that they are learning. For example, even though many of Jeanine’s students
have the novice’s tendency to focus on surface similarity when they classify animals, there are certain
contexts in which they know that internal characteristics are more important for classification than surface
characteristics. Jeanine knows from past experience that her students think that worms and snakes are
very different, even though they are superficially similar. By asking students why they are very different,
despite their surface similarity, she helps them understand that many of the critical defining characteristics
are internal characteristics that they cannot see—backbones, the structure of the brain and organs, the
circulatory system, and so on. Snakes share more of these characteristics with reptiles than with worms,
even though snakes lack legs, and reptiles have them. Then Jeanine can help students see that the same
ideas apply to other animals that look similar on the surface. They are closely related only if they also
share internal characteristics. Students’ prior ideas about snakes and worms are a conceptual resource that
Jeanine builds on to help them understand the basic principles of classification.