Chapter 6, page 80
ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONSSo far we have considered situations in which students have prior conceptions that are consistent
with what they are learning. Now we turn to a second very important kind of prior conceptions—
alternative conceptions, which are inconsistent with what the students are learning. Alternative
conceptions typically interfere with learning the target conceptions (Chinn & Brewer, 2001; Eryilmaz,
2002; Kendeou & van den Broek, 2005). Because of their alternative conceptions, students may
misunderstand what they are learning, or they may simply not believe what they are learning (Chinn &
Samarapungavan, 2001).
As an introduction to students’ alternative conceptions, let’s consider Alexis Robbins, a fifth-grade
teacher, who is planning a lesson on the Western migration during the Great Depression in the U.S. One of
Alexis’s instructional goals is for her students to learn that migrations often occur when people’s desired
way of life (economic, religious, political, etc.) is threatened or unfulfilled (Ferretti, MacArthur, & Okolo,
2007). Because Alexis has learned that her students may have prior conceptions about any topic she
teaches, she decides to find out about what their prior conceptions are on this topic. A week before starting
the unit, she asks several students who stayed after school why very large numbers of people in the U.S. in
the 1930s might have moved West. Some typical responses were: “People moved because they wanted a
better home, like a bigger house or a bigger yard, or like because they wanted to be closer to their work.”
“Maybe they got more money and wanted to live in a nicer neighborhood.” “The parents might have gotten
a promotion, and they had to move to a different office” (cf. Ferretti et al., 2007).
Alexis notices that these students share a common alternative conception. They think that the
reasons for large-scale migration to different parts of the country are the same as the reasons why their
own families might move to a different house. She now realizes that when her students read textbook
sentences such as “Many families in Oklahoma packed all their belongings into their trucks and moved to
California because they were looking for better lives,” they might misinterpret this to mean that the
migrants had plenty of money and therefore wanted to move to nicer homes near California beaches. She
realizes that her students would fail to appreciate the depths of the economic despair that prompted
Oklahoman farmers to move to California.
As a result, Alexis realizes that she must address these alternative conceptions in her class. She
therefore adds a discussion to her lesson that carefully draws students’ attention to the contrast between
everyday reasons for moving and reasons for mass migrations. Specifically, she asks students why people
they know move. When they give answers such as “they want a bigger house,” she will explicitly point out
that although this is why their families might move, it is not why most families moved in the 1930s. Then
she will draw their attention to the hardships of the Great Depression and the drought that created the Dust
Bowl. Through discussion, she will help her students gain an understanding that the plight of Oklahoma
farmers of that era was completely different from their own situation. This will make them better prepared
to understand the mass migrations of the Great Depression.
How Alternative Conceptions Emerge
In this section, we will examine why students have alternative conceptions and how their alternative
conceptions affect learning. These insights will help us see how we can use this information as teachers to
improve instruction. To gain a better understanding of what alternative conceptions are and how they
arise, we will begin by exploring one alternative conception in depth—children’s conceptions of the
earth’s shape.
Psychologists Stella Vosniadou and William Brewer investigated elementary school children’s
conceptions about the earth’s shape (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1994). They