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students’ ability to argue successfully in one situation (persuading their
parents to give them permission to do something) is a conceptual resource
that teachers can use to help students learn to argue successfully in a different
situation (writing better persuasive essays).Implications for Instructions
On topics that are difficult because students lack schemas or have alternative conceptions, it is
critical for you as a teacher to identify and use students’ conceptual resources. As you teach year by year,
you should aim to identify more and more conceptual resources that will help you build on students’
current ideas. When you begin teaching, a very valuable source of information about useful conceptual
resources will be your colleagues. In effective schools, teachers share information about how to teach
difficult concepts (Ma, 1999); much of this information consists of ideas students have that teachers can
productively build on.
CONCEPTIONS ABOUT LEARNING AND ABOUT KNOWLEDGEThe fifth type of prior conception affecting learning consists of conceptions about learning and
knowledge (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; L. Mason, 2003). Conceptions about learning are people’s
conceptions about how they learn. They include conceptions such as “I learn best by saying things over
and over” or “I learn more if I can talk about my ideas.” Conceptions about knowledge are conceptions
are about the nature of knowledge (such as how complex or how certain knowledge is) and how we know
that our knowledge is true. Conceptions about the nature of knowledge include ideas such as “I believe
that most topics I learn in school are quite simple” and “I believe that scientific knowledge is absolutely
certain.” Conceptions about how we know that our knowledge is true includes ideas such as “I can be sure
something is true only if I have some personal experience that proves it to me” or “I know science is true
because the textbook says so.” Conceptions about learning and about knowledge are also called beliefs by
many researchers because they people often seem to have strong beliefs about these topics. Following the
use of many current researchers, we will use the terms beliefs as well as the term conceptions in this
section.
Conceptions about Learning
Conceptions about learning influence how students learn by influencing the strategies that students
use to learn or the amount of effort that students will exert to learn. Availing conceptions are conceptions
that facilitate learning; nonavailing conceptions are conceptions that tend to impede learning (Muis,
2004). In this section, we consider three availing and nonavailing conceptions about learning.
Learning is quick. Some students believe that many or most topics they learn can be learned very
quickly. This conception is a nonavailing conception; students who think that learning is quick tend to
learn less (Chinn, in press-c; Muis, 2004). They tend to give up quickly if they do not understand
something right away. They expect that if something cannot be learned quickly, it cannot be learned at all,
so there is no point trying to learn it. In contrast, students who believe that learning often takes time are
more likely to exert the effort and spend the time needed to learn complex material.
Rote memory is an effective learning strategy. In chapter 2, we learned that effective learners use
active learning strategies such as elaboration, explanation, and visualization. Effective learners do not
simply try to rote memorize material. However, many students believe that rote memorization is an
effective learning strategy, such as a foreign language student who studies vocabulary simply by reading