About-Misconceptions.pdf

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ABOUT MISCONCEPTIONS SETAC 1

About misconceptions

Etienne Bolmont

SETAC - Do not cite without authors permission

Introduction

The learning of science by children is often thought to need opposite methods. Amethod linked to behaviorism and is frequently qualified as traditional: whenknowledge is transmitted by the one who knows, that is, the teacher, to the one whodoes not, the pupil. This method is sometimes necessary to teach facts that have to beadmitted, as for example the series of numbers.

A different approach to learning science emerged in the second part of the lastcentury, linked to the research of Piaget and qualified as constructivist. This approachargues, in brief, that children build their own knowledge from elements that questionboth their own point of view and the one based on external influences. "All learninginvolves the interpretation of phenomena, situations and events including classroominstruction through the perspective of the learner's existing knowledge."

If Piaget only took into account the interaction between the learner and the empiricalworld with which the child is engaged - the world of objects or the natural world - wecannot ignore the relations developed between the leaner and her social environment.This is what Vygotskij argued in his socio-constructivist approach, according to whichlanguage is an essential mediator in thought development. In this context, we canconsider that the child learns by confrontation between his own ideas and those of hispeers or of the teacher.

The teacher may play a role in the both approaches; according to the circumstances,her choice may be to pass on knowledge, and/or to make the pupils acquire it on theirown.

Each time this possibility occurs, we have to start from the pupil's knowledge, which ison two levels:

Knowledge acquired previously from formal education, mastered henceoperational.

Conceptions built on personal interpretation of a question, conceptions

more or less solid, hencemore or less difficult to question.


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Conceptions or misconceptions?

The English term misconceptionsimplies an a prioriidea that conceptions expressed bypupils, giving their point of view on a problem, should be sortedinto two categories:trueor false. If the teacher considers conceptions as errors preventing learning, she isin conflict with the idea of constructivism. The value judgment is therefore made fromthe teacher's own knowledge or from the expression of knowledge defined in thecurriculum.

As far as the child is concerned, there is no error notion when he expresses aconception of hers, rather it is expressed in confidenceor at the very most with doubt,but always it is always consistent with his explanatory system of the world.

The pedagogical principle in this case is to let the child start from her own ideas,

ending up on her own to questioning them, process which can occur: a) in a cognitiveway, when the child perceives the contradiction with the external world (linked withobservation, experience or a model); or b) in a socio-cognitive way, when sheperceives the contradiction with ideas of other pupils, or with ideas defended by theteacher, or with information sources to which she has access.

Therefore, the student is not considered as tabula rasawithin a new learning situation.She possesses a certain body of knowledge that the teacher should know in order toensure the optimal teaching approach. This approach will allow, on the one hand, tomake the child conscious of her error and preparing her to correct or to question it,and also allow for detection tools that help the teacher understand what is an obstacle

to learning.

The following paragraphs analyse further the notions of conceptions andmisconceptions of children in the education milieu. Whichever are the terms used inliterature - preconceptions, alternative conceptions, naive beliefs, mentalrepresentations, alternative structures and naive theories - we will refer to them asconceptions.

Their characteristics

Even if pupils sometimes express them with a touch of doubt, conceptions are mostoften asserted and defended. They are based on observations that are linked toperception, through the senses, perception which offers evidence upon which thestudent may lean.

This isone of the epistemological obstacles, called first experience, that Bachelarduses when he asserts that science is not built in the streets or in the fields. Theseconceptions resist to change; but the deployed pedagogy is not always sufficient toquestion them either by the supposed experimental evidence or observations, by theteacher's own ability to convince, or by the influence of the other pupils. They maycoexist together with a correct approach of a problem. Pupils use on a pragmatic or

opportunist way the answer 'conception' or the answer 'taught knowledge'.

Constructivism shows that a conception may be questioned by a student through acomplex process at two levels - knowledge and individual: firstly, the knowledge


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system must be dismantled hence destabilize the student,then new knowledge may berestructured, therefore the learner is be re-stabilised. This is what Piaget calledincreasing re-stabilization.

If the gap between the old and the new conception is too big (according to Vitgotskyszone of proximal development), it is possible that pupils do not get over it. In thiscase, we see either:

Insufficiency or inadequacy of submitted explanations - therefore the pupilstays on his first idea, or

Too strong a destabilization which is not accepted by the learner who will thusbe led to refuse the expected change of conception.

Their origins and emergence

Conceptions usually appear when pupils have a scientific problem to solve or aphenomenon to explain. They constitute a concrete solution to the asked question.

Their origin is frequently based on an everyday experience of the physical world andthey are built by analogy between a familiar situation and the problematic situation, asthe following examples show:

How to explain the fact that in the summer temperatures are higher than inthe winter? Everyday experience tells us that in order to warm up ourselves,

we have to be closer to the radiator. We may conclude that the warm source,the sun, must be closer to the earth in summer than in the winter.

Conceptions may also come from information more or less under control:

If we refer to a shipwreck (such as the Titanic), pupils may get the idea thatan object with a hole sinks when we put it in water.

In electricity, current has the same value everywhere in a simple circuit (inseries). A frequent conception of the students is that, on the contrary, thecurrent is decreasing as it goes through receiversin the electrical circuit.

We can classify conceptions into three types:

Descriptive conceptions: they are a descriptive answer without explanation,poor in the possibilities for exploitation.

Operational conceptions: they refer to known situations. Conceptual conceptions: there is a will of scientific explanation, they may show

a cause-to-effect relation, they need notions.

With an adapted questionnaire, in oral or written form (texts and drawings), theteacher may make individual conceptions of pupils come up. These conceptions can be

gathered in order to obtain some common conceptions in the classroom, conceptionsthat are repeated in every school year. Those expressed by only one child are not lessimportant than the others in so far as they underline an aspect of the problem tosolve.


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Taking intoaccount conceptions in science teaching

A common practice of teachers is to make pupils' conceptions emerge but stop rightthere considering it enough. This practice cannot help science education since it is onlya starting point of a research process. "Acquiring scientific knowledge corresponds tolearning attitudes, methods and some main concepts. To access it, we need to gothrough a series of modifications, remodeling, breaks that cannot happenspontaneously, by a simple expression of the ideas of the learners, or even by a simpleconfrontation with reality."

If we don't take conceptions into account, they persist in a latent state, ready toappear at the earliest opportunity. Knowledge given by the teacher is plated and soonforgotten, and often itdoes not allow solutions of new situations.

Rather than ignore them, Giordan and De Vecchi prefer to deal with them in order toplot against them, which meansconfrontation, using them in order to transform them.We need to make the pupils aware of their own errors by giving them the necessaryelements to make them able to rectify their initial conceptions.

We could imagine an individual confrontation with an experimental element, leading toa meta-cognitive conflict, which is capable to question the childs initial conception.This situation does not fit with the reality of the classroom and many authors considerthat it is by language that the most effective questions can be conceived, and theirresolution will allow to outclass conceptions. It is through socio-cognitive conflict thatthey will be phrased, sustained, abandoned or backed up. The scientific debate plays

an essential role in this clarification phase. It makes the essential qualities of ascientific mindevident these are critical mind and curiosity. Self-critique, critique ofones own ideas, of the ideas of the others, curiosity about the others' ideas andcuriosity in an active research process. All this necessitates argumentation about whichthe teacher must be careful.

We share, in this analysis, the scheme proposed by SETAC within the pedagogicalframework (www.museoscienza.org/setac/resources), although debate should not bethe last thingto do. In particular, it cannot settle questions that appear in discussion.On the contrary, debate allows children to express questions more clearly, withouteliminating problemsa priori, therefore finding solutions in experiments, observations,

inquiry, documents or museum. Only propositions contrary to logic may disappear. Theothers are going to coexist in the classroom, and 'misconceptions' will disappear only ifthey meet an obstacle, a difficulty. The obstacle is not created by the others' speech; itshould also not be created by the teacher in an authority role, fact which would be inopposition with the method.

They can be questioned only if they become hypotheses that investigation can confirmor infirm. This means that the role of the debate is to make students pass from thestage of certainty to the one of doubt, using hypothesis at the basis of scientificresearch.

We can compare the way science is built in the scientific community and the waychildren are led to learn science. In particular, what corresponds to a conception forchildren is represented by the scientific model. We can also consider the notion of truthas adapted to the current model that is considered as valid on the one hand, and to


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the conception considered by children as sufficient to answer to the posed problem, onthe other. In both cases, truth is temporary, relative to the state of knowledge of thetime for the scientist, relative to their own cognitive development for students:

Scientists Students

Start from a question to solve, whichcomes from an experiment, anobservation.

Start from a question to solve, oftenlaid down.

The problem has no a priorisolution. The solution is known tothe teacherand it corresponds to a didactictransposition.

Sum up the situation of knowledgeacquired through a documentary researchand stand in the frame of a theoreticalmodel.

Search an a priorisolution bymobilizing a conception.

Confront their ideas by spreading them,enter controversies.

Confront their ideas to those of theirpeers, which causes a debate.

Produce results to the retained questionsthrough their experimental research or

through a model. Failure is possible.

Produce results to the retainedquestions during the debate through

investigation. Answers exist accordingto the artificial character of thesituation.

And in the museum?

Can we apply this learning approach to the museum? We know that people come tothe museum with their own conceptions that may interfere with the intentions of themuseum itself. So we feel the need to take on account these ideas in the way objects

are presented or in the way educators conduct a visit.

In the second case, we find something similar to the school, and educators have to beprepared to such a method. But it seems rather difficult to take into account people'sideas in the presentation of collections, when they are in "self-guided" mode. Moreresearch is needed for really identifying the main conceptions of visitors, taking intoaccount their age, social origin, level of knowledge. As Henrikson and Jorde (2000)argue, "for museum professionals, knowledge of the audience conceptions on an issue(within an exhibition) should always be considered in the exhibition developmentprocess; it should be noted that the audience conceptions may prevent the intendedinterpretation of information presented at a museum".

Researchers have carried out studies on this. Falk and Dierking (1992) noticed thatvisitors come to museums to learn about the strange and wonderful things displayed.To do this and to understand what they encounter, "they rely on their conceptual


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framework their knowledge and experience". Falk and Dierking distinguish occasionaland frequent visitors, arguing that "frequent visitors have a frame of reference rathersimilar to that of the museum staff, while the occasional visitors can be verydissimilar". The authors underline the fact that "many exhibits are organized in a waythat makes sense to a museum expert, but not necessarily to the general public". So, itcan be difficult for the average visitor to understand the intended messages.

According to Feher (1990), "people are explanatory creatures. They form theories, ormental models, to explain what they experience. These models are sometimes naive,often incorrect. The point is not that some people have erroneous theories; it is thateveryone forms theories to explain what they have observed (Norman 1988). Museumvisitors are a case in point. Norman analyzed the visitors' reactions according to theseexpressions, revealing the existence of conceptions from a Piagetian point of view:

"Interesting!" meaning for the visitor that although the effect is not in hisprevious experience, he could explain it. He has a mental model into which theexperience could be assimilated.

"Strange or weird!" meaning that this effect is contradicting his previousexperience, his prior conceptions. "This exhibit displays a discrepant event.Ideally, by confronting the visitor with his preconceived or naive notions, a'Weird!' exhibit opens the way for conceptual changes to occur."

As Sue Allen (2004) points out, "it is indeed possible to create exhibit environmentswhere visitors are simultaneously in a constant state of free choice and in the process

of learning some form of science". The museum offers to a diverse public the freedomto choose their own path, follow their personal interests, do their own inquiry, andcreate their own meanings but at the same time, it wants to be a place where sciencecan be learnt. She emphasizes a model of inquiry cycle that could help to have such aconsequence:

presenting a surprising phenomenon letting people explore it giving an explanation extending to connections to everyday experience.

This model built on hands-on manipulations has been embraced by many museums ina rupture to the transmission-based theory of learning "because it puts the visitor in avery active role as learner: experimenting, hypothesizing, interpreting, and drawingconclusions."

If our goal is to make people acquire concepts and models of science, we have tocreate exhibits that succeed in communicating abstract concepts, themes and modelsof science. The first difficulty is to support a huge diversity of learners who drive theirown learning. One solution, "multimodal", appeals to different learning styles andlevels of knowledge. Roberts (1997) and Silverman (1995) argue that narrative, andparticularly narrative with multiple voices, should replace authoritative knowledge-

dissemination as the iconic mode for museums to conduct their educational mission.However, narratives and personal stories have had a much less prominent role inscience museums, where the dominant mode is still hands-on inquiry with a single-voiced authoritative explanation".


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For Anderson and al. (2000), one solution is found school visits in "the importance ofplanning pre- and post-visit activities not only to support the development of scientificconceptions, but also to detect and respond to alternative conceptions that may beproduced or strengthened during a visit to an informal learning center."

Hohenstein and Tran (2007) suggest the use of questions in exhibits labels to generateexplanatory conversation among science museum visitors.

Perhaps as an ideal aim, Hein (1995) develops the concept of constructivist museum:"The viewer constructs personal knowledge from the exhibit and the process of gainingknowledge is itself a constructive act Exhibits that allow visitors to draw their ownconclusions about the meaning of the exhibition are based on this constructivistprinciple Constructivist museum exhibits have no fixed entry and exit points, allow

the visitor to make his or her own connections with the material and encourage diverseways to learn" (see Figure 2 below).

Can we imagine a new way of presenting things in a museum that focuses on thelearner more than on the subject to be learned? SETAC develops examples of visitoruse of conceptions in museum exhibits. It is impossible to design new exhibits basedon these ideas in the time of the project, but the project looks into childrensexperience of already existing exhibits.


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Hein (1995) The Constructivist Museum


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Some examples in primary school

The following are examples from work with 10-11 year old pupils during SETACpresenting the use of conceptions in science teaching.

1. How does a submarine function?Here children have to imagine solutions to build a model of submarine that could workunder water. They work in groups. Firstly, they draw a sketch of their proposalandsecondly, they present their solution to the whole class, in a debate. The explanations

they give show some conceptions about the materiality and the strength of air.

The children of the group give a descriptive conception of theirmodel: "We inhale the air inside the can in order to make it sink,we let the air go inside to make the submarine go up". Thedebate makes appear two obstacles: one is linked to theconsequence of making a vacuum in the can that should bend bycrushing. The second obstacle is linked to the fact that peopleinside must breathe when the submarine is diving.

2. Digestion: what is the way taken by food in the human body?Confronting and comparing drawings lead toa debate that madethe role of nutrition appear: "Why do we eat?".

The pupil who depicted the digestive tract may have been misledby the French word "tube": he drew a continuous pipe,apparently impermeable (a descriptive conception too).

The straw is used tomake air go inside

and the paste isused to fill in thehole and to hold thestraw


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He recognized easily that there were at least organs to reduce the alimentsmechanically.

3.How does the babyeat?

On this drawing thepupil linked mother'sstomach and thebody of the baby by apipe (umbilical cord,

word yet met andwhose role innutrition isacknowledged by thechild). This is a

conceptualconception with thewill to explain.

With this pupil we had to go back to the former chapter: digestion; where is food

going after passing through the stomach, what happens in the small intestine, etc. This

Before it is aflower, it's a seed.It is used to makehoney becausebees take thepollen


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clarification allowed to remember the reduction of food into nutriments conveyed byblood and then to realize a drawing where exchanges between the mother's and thebabys blood were shown.

4.What is a flower, where does it come from, what is it used for? Describe one.This drawing shows that the pupil knows some elements of vocabulary, correctlyplaced. Moreover stamens have been drawn without any caption. This is a proof thathe tried to draw scientifically a flower which is not like the others. However, the notionof seed is not acquired and finalismis underlying (everything occurs in a precise goal:clouds move in the sky to bring the night). Indeed, for this child flowers have nothingto do with fruit and are only used to make honey. This is an operational conception,referring to a known situation.

In the classroom, when the conceptions have been shared, questions appeared: "Whatis a fruit? What is a vegetable? Does a rosebush give fruits? Why does the flower wilt?What are the other insects doing when they come on the flower if they don't makehoney?"

A video allowed to answer these questions, and pupils built life cycles for some plants(apple and cherry).

6. How does a volcano erupt?

During the debate in small groups of pupils, some arguments have been advanced todecompose this conceptual conception:

There may be eruptions under the sea where it is cold. Volcanoes may erupt in the night. We have seen that volcanoes don't exist everywhere on Earth, hence it

has nothing to do with the sun! If what you say is true, there shouldbemany volcanoes in Africa.

I think that if the sun is too hot, the volcano will erupt.


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Heat comes from the center of Earth and lava becomes cold even whenthe sun is shining."

Examples in SETAC activities

The themes studied in SETAC activities allowed conceptions to emerge. Energy, healthand climate change may offer many problems to solve at the students level, and maythen bring about various conceptions. The problems can be sorted into two categoriesin so far as they either lead to scientific questions - the solution of which pupils mayfind - or to questions not yet resolved by science - which might include social,economical or political aspects.

The example of thermal insulationoffers conceptions of the first category:

In the class of Fabrice Charnot, with 10-11 year old children, two scientific questionshave been solved by experiments:

1. The experimental process is given to the children: we use metal boxes of two sizes(tin cans of food) separated with different materials (here: nothing, cotton andpolystyrene). Children have to guess how temperature will vary in each box,expressing some conceptual conceptions: here for example, cotton is warmer thanpolystyrene or cotton warms up the inner box more than polystyrene.

To test these conceptions children only have to follow the variation of temperatureinside the three boxes : the temperature stays the same in each box. So polystyrene orcotton don't warm up.

It is the same with a pullover. Here we can ask: Why do we feel warmer with awoollen pullover? Starting from a different question, we get the same conception thatit is the material that brings warmth, without any idea of thermal insulation.

Now, we fill the inner boxes with hot water and ask: What will happen to thetemperature of this hot water in each box?. Should we let the children answer beforeany measurement, they will have the choice between for example the water in the

box containing cotton will cool down less than the water in the box with polystyreneand the water will warm up more with polystyrene than with cotton, they oftenanswer at random. It is a justification to search an experimental answer.


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After the measurements, we can see that the decrease of water temperature is lowerin the case of polystyrene than in the case of cotton. Their interpretation generally isthat polystyrene gives more warmth to the water than cotton, as they originallythought. Their first conception has not been modified.

Here a debate seems necessary to recall and to use the result of the experiment whereneither polystyrene or cotton warmed up inside the box. If we cannot invoke this factin this case, we have to find another explanation. Then using the experiment with hotwater, the good aspect is that polystyrene seems to prevent the cooling down of watermore than cotton does, polystyrene is more efficient to prevent warmth from going

outside. If they do not mention it, we then have to introduce the word insulation(orinsulating).

We could also propose a new situation with ice cubes inside the inner boxes. In whichbox do the ice cubes melt quicker? If they use the concept of cold, they can answerthat the material insulating effect is to prevent more or less cold from going out of theboxes. Here is the old Aristotelian distinction between cold and warm, and it is afrequent conception for children.

Let us try to speak only in terms of heat exchange; in this case the insulator preventsheat from entering the boxes. This interpretation of the phenomena is difficult to reach

with young pupils.

2. About the role of air that explains the insulating effect of many materials, childrenmake experiments with ice cubes surrounded or not with cotton. Cotton is compressed


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or not compressed. The three ice cubes are put in the same place, at the sameambient temperature. Some children kept the conception that cotton gives heat, otherswho accepted the good conception hesitate between compressed cotton or not.

The first ice cube to melt is the one not surrounded with cotton.

It confirms the former result. Then the one surrounded with compressed cotton meltsand the last one to melt is the ice cube surrounded with airy cotton. Airy cotton is thenthe best insulator, which underlines the importance of the presence of air inside the

material.

A debate confirms the peculiar role of air in the composition of insulators (fur,polystyrene, wool, glass wool etc.). It shows that some pupils kept their firstconceptions, saying that compressed cotton warms up less than airy cotton, whileothers think of a movement of air entering the cotton. In fact it is due to the insulatorpower of air imprisoned in the cotton.

In these two experiments, we measure the difficulty to make the children change theirmind. We are never sure that they accepted the new conception before we placedthem in a different situation where they can use it, as we saw with ice cubes.

A second example is given in the class of Bernard Pecqueux. In this primary school,pupils are 10 years old.

Here we meet two different situations.1. The first one is about explanations of climate change. Some children during adebate expressed the idea that climate change as being due to the ozone hole. Thesocial origin of this conception is clear. But it is typically a conception that cannot befalsified with an explanation at the childrens level. The teacher may say that there isno link between the ozone hole and climate change, but cannot bring any evidence ofit. The question cannot be solved, just evoked inside an opinion debate, not in ascientific debate.

2. The second situation is about the greenhouse effect. The explanation of thegreenhouse effect is also difficult for children of the primary school, but buildinggreenhouse models clears some conceptions about the role of the envelope. But these


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models cannot be easily adapted to the Earth greenhouse effect. We can only makean analogy considering the correspondences between our models and reality. By doingthis, we give them an operational conception.

As a quick conclusion, we can see with these few examples the richness of theconceptions that children imagine or build. These interesting ideas need to beconsidered in order to teach science to our pupils. For this purpose, we have to allowchildren free expression that will show which ideas they have to make them question.

BibliographyYou will find an exhaustive bibliography on conceptions compiled by Reinders Duit at:http://www.ipn.uni-kiel.de/aktuell/stcse/stcse.html

Adams Jennifer D. Tran Lynn U. & Gupta Preeti, Creedon-OHurley Helen (2008)Sociocultural frameworks of conceptual change: implications for teaching andlearning in museums. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol. 3, 2. Springer.

Allen Sue (2004) Designs for Learning: Studying Science Museum Exhibits That DoMore Than Entertain. Science Education, 88(supplement).

Anderson, D., Lucas, K. B. , Ginns, I. S. , Dierking, L. D. (2000) Development ofknowledge about electricity and magnetism during a visit to a science museum

and related post-visit activities. Science Education, 84(5), 658-679Falk John (1999) Museums as Institutions for Personal Learning. Deadalus,Vol. 128,No. 3, America's Museums (Summer, 1999), pp. 259-275.

Falk John & Dierking Lynn (1992)The Museum Experience. Washington DC, Whalsbackbooks.

Feher Elsa (1990) 'Interactive museum exhibits as tools for learning: explorations withlight', International Journal of Science Education,12:1,35 49, 1990.

Giordan Andr (1983) Les reprsentations des lves: Outils pour la pdagogie.Cahiers Pdagogiques,214, 26-28.

GiordanAndr (1984)Learning process (and obstacles thereto) of science pupils aged6-14. Council of Europe, Council for cultural co-operation, Educational research

workshop on science in primary education. Edinburgh.Giordan Andr (1985) Des reprsentations des lves l'appropriation de quelquesconcepts scientifiques. In A. Giordan (ed.) Reconstruire ses savoir(pp. 113-127).Paris, Messidor.


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Giordan Andr & Grard de Vecchi (1987) Les origines du savoir. Delachaux et Niestl,Neufchtel.

Giordan Andr & Grard de Vecchi (2002) L'enseignement scientifique, Comment fairepour que "a marche?". Delagrave Edition, Paris.

Hein George (1995) The Constructivist Museum. Journal for Education in Museums, 16,21-23 (http://www.gem.org.uk/pubs/news/hein1995.html).

Henriksen, E. K., Jorde, D. (2001) High school students' understanding of radiation andthe environment: Can museums play a role? Science Education, 85(2), 189-206.

Hohenstein, J., & Tran, L. (2007) Use of questions in exhibit labels to generateexplanatory conversation among science museum visitors. International Journalof Science Education, 29(12), 1557-1580

John P. Smith, Andrea A. di Sessa & Jeremy Roschelle (1983) MisconceptionsReconceived: A Constructivist Analysis of Knowledge in Transition in The Journalof the Learning Sciences, 1993, 3(2), 115-163.

Piaget, Jean (1930)The childs conception of physical causality. London. Kegan Paul.Piaget, Jean (1971)The childs conception of the world. London. Routledge & Kegan

Paul.Roberts, L. (1997) From knowledge to narrative: Educators and the changing museum.

Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Rosalind Driver, Edith Guesne &Andre Tiberghien (1985) (eds): Children's Ideas in

Science. Open University Press, Philadelphia.Silverman, L. H. (1995) Visitor meaning-making in museums for a new age. Curator,

38(3), 161 170.

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