Chapter 6, page 106
Conceptions from Previously Learned Topics
When students are learning about a new topic, they may have conceptions about related, earlier-
learned topics that can help them learn that new topic. We have seen that many third graders have
alternative conceptions of the earth’s shape. What related topics have students learned about that can help
them learn about the earth’s shape? Most third graders have some ideas about planets and moons that
teachers can build on (Skopeliti & Vosniadou, 2007). Specifically, most third graders know that there are
planets and moons, that planets and moons are round and solid, that they travel in circles in space, and
that they rotate. They just do not think that the earth is one of these bodies. Students’ previously learned
conceptions about planets and moons are conceptual resources that teachers can build upon. The teacher
can build on these ideas by explicitly explaining to students that the earth that we live on is a planet like
the other planets. Even if students do not yet fully understand why people do not fall off the bottom of the
earth, they will begin to understand that the adult idea is that the earth is flying through space around the
sun like the planets. They will begin constructing ideas that are on the right track.
Conceptions Derived from Previous Experiences
When students are having difficulty learning a topic, teachers can often draw on students’ out-of-
school experiences to help them understand a topic (Clement, Brown, & Zietsman, 1989; J. P. Smith, III
et al., 1993/1994). Students have many experiences at home, in sports, and in their community that are
relevant to many school topics.
For example, to help students understand the difficult idea that increased demand causes prices to
rise, teachers can capitalize on students’ own experiences with buying and selling things. Imagine that a
teacher asks a class of high school students what would happen if a student who had a very outdated video
game tried to sell it to her classmates. Students agree that no one would pay very much for it; the teacher
points out that this is a situation in which demand is low. Then the teacher asks what would happen if the
same student offered to sell a brand new video game that everyone in the class was eager to have. This
time, students agree that if one student offered to pay the store price, others would offer to pay a little
more, gradually bidding up the price due to the high demand. By developing an example that builds on
students’ understanding of familiar products in a familiar setting, teachers can help students construct an
understanding of the relationship between price and demand.
Conceptions about Analogical Situations
A fourth kind of conceptual resource that can help students understand difficult topics is
conceptions about analogical situations (Glynn, 2007; Yerrick, Doster, Nugent, Parke, & Crawley,
2003). An analogical situation is a situation that is superficially dissimilar to a target situation but similar
in some other important ways. For example, consider middle school students learning about cell organelles
(nuclei, the membrane, mitochondria, chloroplasts, and so on). The students are completely unfamiliar
with cells and their organelles, so the teacher helps them by describing an analogical situation. She
explains that in some ways, cells are like cities, and the organelles are like different parts of the cities.
Mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell) are like energy plants. The nucleus is like the town hall, where
the government makes decisions. The membrane is like a city wall that surrounds the city. The teacher has
endeavored to help students learn about unfamiliar target conceptions by drawing on their conceptions
about cities as an analogous situation. Cities are superficially very different from cells; in reality, a city
looks nothing like a cell. But there are certain important similarities (even though power plants look
nothing like mitochondria, they have a similar function of producing energy) that can help students use
their ideas about cities to help them build knowledge about cells.
The process of making connections between the analogical situation to the target situation is called
analogical mapping. For example, here are some of the ideas that can be mapped from the process of