J Sci Teacher Educ (2007) 18:795800

DOI 10.1007/s10972-007-9075-2
EDITORIAL

Prognosis for Science Misconceptions Research

John Settlage M. J. Dee Goldston

Published online: 27 July 2007

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Introduction
Imagine that your semester is over and youre working through the administrative,
electronic, and emotional debris that has been gathering for several weeks. Partway
through the workday, a chime comes from your computer signaling that youve
received e-mail. Here is what you find (this excerpt is from an actual e-mail):
Dear Professor,
I am an engineer working on two educational projects and have been searching
online for educators in the state who might be able to point me in the direction of
research done on best teaching methods. The assistant deans secretary suggested
that I contact you to see if you could help point me in the right direction.
The first project is an after-school program for elementary and secondary school
students. While I plan to spend some time reinforcing proper grammar and the
correct use of apostrophes, the majority of time will be devoted to critical thinking
and science concepts.
The second project is a series of educational videos using exploration techniques
(from robotics to adventure sports) to teach concepts in the fields of science and
engineering (e.g., demonstrating how F = ma allows a skydiver to move laterally
through the air by deflecting the airflow with his body or how the conservation of
angular momentum allows a snowboarder to change the rate of his spins in
midjump).

J. Settlage (&)
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
e-mail: john.settlage@uconn.edu
M. J. Dee Goldston
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

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I was wondering if you could point me toward any statistics related to science
learning and possibly set aside some time to tell me about your experience in the
field.
Hmm. How does one sum up 50 or so years of science education research in a
way that directs an engineer-turned-educator along a path thats likely to benefit
students? Why does this feel like a qualifying examination question with so many
possible directions and where none seem to lead in a productive direction? If there
was just one area to point this person toward, it seems that science misconceptions
research could be a strong possibility. But a quick Web search for student
misconceptions and science education revealed very little being published
within educational research journals.
Upon reflection, it appears that research on students science misconceptions has
all but faded away. In the 1980s, research on students misconceptions seemed
ubiquitous. The book Childrens Ideas in Science, edited by Driver, Guesne, and
Tiberghein (1985, Open University Press), catalogued student conceptions of
various science topics. The video A Private Universe (http://www.learner.org/
resources/series28.html) was produced in 1987 and was followed by Minds of Our
Own (http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html), which bears a 1997 copyright. Beyond that, there were a couple of high-profile conferences held at Cornell
University and an online catalog of science misconceptions. Viewed from a
different stance, science misconception research seemed to be an area of intense and
hopeful activityand, yet, just when the work was becoming substantial and
fruitful for science teaching, it faded away as science educators moved toward other
tasks.
Perhaps the impression of having abandoned science misconception research is
not widely shared. Is this vexation genuine, and is it something that is felt by others?
We didnt know. So we sent an e-mail to a few veteran science teacher educators to
uncover their thoughts. Here is what we asked in our decidedly informal poll:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

From your perspective, what benefits to science education resulted from

studies about science misconceptions?
In your role as a teacher educator, how do you incorporate science
misconceptions into that work?
How would you explain the fading of misconceptions from the science
education landscape?
If individuals wished to undertake research on science misconceptions, what
would you recommend needs to be investigated?

In what follows, we will share what we gleaned from this venture.

Benefits to Science Education of Misconceptions Research

One option we had to consider was whether or not research on science
misconceptions had been useful at all. To avoid condemning misconception
research to the realm of intellectual dead ends, we thought it would be best to open
ourselves to the possibility that misconceptions research was at least marginally

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beneficial. Here are some benefits identified by our informants. One individual
indicated that methodological and conceptual tools emerged from the study of
misconceptions, including concept maps and pedagogical content knowledge.
Another informant suggested there were teaching benefits to misconceptions
research because this information guides teachers to anticipates students subject
matter problems and to design instructional activities the promote displacing of
unscientific views about natural phenomena. A third individual highlighted the
discovery that multiple-choice exams are often insufficient to assess students
conceptual understandings; students might not choose the correct answer, even if
they have an intelligent and logical appreciation for the content. Our fourth
informant echoed the complexities of student learning and that the misconceptions
research served to remind us that learners often come into the classroom with
preconceived ideas about the topic under study. The final informant indicated that
the true strength of misconceptions research was its potential to direct our attention
to deeper issues of cognition, assessment, pedagogy, and so on. So while not
unanimous in their rationale, all of the informants were aligned with us in their
positive regard for misconceptions research, which suggests that to claim that those
efforts were fruitless is, in effect, a misconception. In their responses to the next
prompt, our peers described the usefulness of misconceptions research within their
efforts as science teacher educators.

Utility of Science Misconceptions Within Teacher Education

Another uncertainty about the status of science misconceptions was whether or not
it was only the purview of educational research or if it somehow permeated into
teacher education. The first informant said he exposed his preservice teachers to
student misconceptions to emphasize the need for different teaching strategies.
According to his perspective, to reinforce an appreciation for theories of cognitive
development and the value of metacognitive strategies, the existence of science
misconceptions provides a useful entry point. A second respondent felt that an
awareness of science misconceptions substantiates the idea that students worldviews provide filters that teachers efforts must pass through. The existence and
persistence of worldviews represent challenges teachers should address to be
effective at teaching science. A third individual uses misconceptions within his
efforts to problematize dualistic thinking. Within his teacher education efforts, this
becomes a major theme as he presents information about the nature of science and
evolution educationand broaching misconceptions helps him undermine the
either/or mentality toward knowledge in general and science in particular. Our
fourth informant echoed the first informant since she uses misconceptions to discuss
learning theories, as well as promoting a need for alternative instructional
approaches. The fifth informant uses misconceptions (by showing A Private
Universe interviews) as a mechanism for obliging teachers to reconsider the
misconceptions they hold about students science misconceptions. This suggests
that this individual finds it useful to rely upon misconceptions and the tenacity with

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which they are held onto as a tool to foster a deeper consideration about science
learning. The consensus of those polled on this point was that each utilizes findings
from misconceptions and conceptual change research within their college and
university teaching. Each employs the research in ways to prepare teachers to
challenge Rousseaus tabula rasa, reminding them that the learners mind is not a
blank slate; rather it is full of logical, systematically used ideas about the natural
world and how it works that can pose barriers to learning science.

Causes for the Fading of Science Misconceptions Research

Our next question invited explanations for the diminishing presence of misconceptions research. Here the opinions were less uniform, with some informants offering
that accountability pressures have shifted resources and interests away from
misconceptions research; however, another informant proposed that research
journals are no longer interested in further cataloging of misconceptions because,
in her words, They want something groovier to appear within their volumes.
Along these lines, another respondent suggested that further research may culminate
with an encyclopedia of misconceptions that could be interesting, but not at all
practical.
In contrast, other informants disputed the claim that research on misconceptions
has diminished. One individual speculated that the fading effect may be an artifact
of the increasing flood of information that makes it harder to pay attention to
recently conducted research about misconceptions. Another educator indicated that
the International Journal of Science Education focuses as strongly as ever on
misconceptions, while other prominent science education journals do not. This
made us wonder whether the fading effect is an artifact of editors priorities or
evidence of a cultural difference.
Another commentator pointed to shifts that are now represented as conceptual
change research. In his view, for those in science disciplines, as well as for those
doing action research within the schools, the alternative conceptions research
agenda is alive and well. Finally, one individual lamented that misconceptions
research did not adequately connect itself to more fundamental questions about
learning. Strange, that a question about learning isnt more at the fore of what were
doing as research. Apparently, the informant worries that researchers of
misconceptions were doing the equivalent of collecting specimens (concepts rather
than beetles), without looking for deeper explanations for the emerging patterns.
This brings us to an interesting juncture. There is fairly uniform regard for
misconceptions research as being valuable, and those we polled point to uses of this
information within their work with aspiring and active teachers. There is some
disagreement about whether or not misconceptions research has outlived its
usefulness, if it is being neglected because some view it as passe or if it has been
shoved aside by testing and accountability policies. The last question our informants
addressed was interesting in light of the prior questions, as each science educator
posed possible avenues for future misconceptions research.

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Recommended Areas for Continued Research Regarding Misconceptions

Given the range and diversity of research directions presented by those polled, it
seems that misconceptions research is not a derelict agenda of the past. Each
informant proposed areas in which they imagined important research could be
conducted. In response to our prompt, one individual wrote, Wow, there remain so
many untouched areas. This was followed by an initial list of science topics:
chemistry, transformations of energy, and ecology. Similarly, another informant
offered, Almost any key concept can be investigated in the right setting, adding
that using conceptual change theory as a referent would be important. A third
individual suggested researching those concepts that lead to misconceptions of
bigger ideas and that have a global pervasiveness in their construction. His advice
was to produce a concise set of misconceptions that all teachers should know, with a
goal of using them in the development of curricular materials and teaching
strategies. Another informant indicated that tying any and all misconceptions
research to fundamental learning theory is definitely important. He speculated,
Maybe too many people think were done with the misconception research, not
realizing that the misconceptions themselves are simply at the surface of something
much deeper. Finally, one other informant suggested that pedagogical content
knowledge and its interplay with the teaching of specific science misconceptions
would be productive. The science educators responding to our questions view
misconception research with a critical eye that leads them to ponder future research
agendas that move beyond the superficial level of identifying misconceptions to
address more complicated issues. The recommendations span exploring links that
connect misconceptions to theories of cognition and pedagogy, as well as examining
the way some concepts lead to misconceptions that undermine larger concepts of the
discipline. Last, there is a perspective that whatever agenda is followed with
misconception research in the future, it should have a practicality of use in teaching
science across the K-20 grade levels.

Implications for Science Teacher Education

What does this indicate about the vitality of misconception research? The informal
poll suggests that misconception research findings and conceptual change theory
remain important to the field and continue to be used by science teacher educators
within their courses. They suggest that misconception findings and conceptual
change research benefits teachers, even as it remains an important area of discussion
with the natural sciences and educational psychology. Past accomplishments that
led to identifying misconceptions are no longer adequate in the current climate of
what counts for research. The preponderance of misconception work in the 1980s
has led to an apparent lull in contemporary misconceptions research. However, it
seems premature to conduct a postmortem at this time.
Perhaps the lull indicates a time in which the science teacher education
community is regrouping and rethinking. We wondered if the early collection stages
of misconceptions (though perceived as superficial now) were essential starting

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points. Now, having created these collections, perhaps misconception researchers

are reformulating questions that seek patterns and deeper meanings of the anatomy
and physiology of misconceptions within the larger body of cognition. As reflected
in the informants comments, there are both practical and substantial avenues for
research that remains to be done. While some speculated that particular journals
may not be receptive to publishing reports about misconceptions research, others
have indicated that such work must be more substantivetied to learning theory,
related to pedagogical content knowledge, and holds potential implications for
classroom practices. At the very least, we discovered that our individual interests
about misconceptions research were echoed within the comments of colleagues. We
feel emboldened to revisit our research about science misconceptions and would
invite others researchers, veterans and novices alike, to return to this movement with
a clearer focus and purpose. It is through such research as this that we can continue
to better understand how to support the teaching and learning of science content
across the K-20 educational continuum.

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