In science education we speak of the problem of prior misconceptions. Those pesky ideas that everyone has wrong and are so hard to educate away. Like that the Earth is closer to the Sun in the summer time. Or that heavier object fall faster than lighter ones.
We find that students will learn the right answer for your test, but then go right back to their old bad habits afterwards.
Just recently I made a connection with my own bad habits regarding certain plain-old regular words. For whatever reason, I learned some words incorrectly at first and now it takes work
every time I use them to use them correctly! For instance I might read this entry's title to mean "Not impressed by the better than best look-out" when it really means "Baffled by the next-to-last stronghold". Some part of my brain knows that the second phrase is correct, but I can't stop myself from reading it the first way initially. I can not clear my prior misconception of those words - something about the way our brains lay down memories really does justice to the old "initial impressions matter most".
Unlike science misconceptions, I could just continue to misuse these words and hope that society changes their definition to suit me. One the other hand, the axial tilt of the Earth and the planet's gravitational field are probably less likely to change to accommodate my students...
No comments:
Post a Comment