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Understanding Understanding
Article in American Journal of Education · February 1985

DOI: 10.1086/443791
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Raymond Nickerson
Tufts University
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Source: American Journal of Education, Vol. 93, No. 2 (Feb., 1985), pp. 201-239
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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RAYMOND S. NICKERSON
Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.
Severalexperimentalstudies are reviewed, the results of which suggest

that students often fail to acquire an understanding of some of the
concepts, relationships,principles,and processesthat are fundamental
to traditionalhigh school course material.Questions of what it means
to understand something and of how to assess understandingare con-
sidered.
Educators would undoubtedly agree that it is important for students
to understand the concepts, relationships, principles, and processes
they encounter in the courses that comprise their formal education.
The evidence is fairly compelling, however, that students often manage
to get through courses without acquiring a clear understanding of
some of the most fundamental aspects of the material the courses are
intended to cover. This paper reviews some of this evidence and discusses
why understanding is sometimes not attained. The question of what
it means to understand arises naturally from the discussion, as does
the question of how to tell whether understanding has been attained.
Examples of Misconceptions and Failures to Understand
Examples of failures to understand probably could be found in any

subject domain in which one looked for them. The choice of those
described here was dictated primarily by the availabilityof experimental
data. It seems safe to assume that similar confusions will be found in
other subject areas as investigators explore them.
Projectile Motion
Apparently a significant percentage of college students, including those

who have had some formal training in physics, do not understand
? 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0036-6773/85/9302-0004$01.00
February 1985 201

UnderstandingUnderstanding
Problem I Problem 2
Problem 3 Problem 4
-
?
FIG. 1.-Illustrations for the curved tube and orbiting ball problems (from McCloskey,
Caramazza, & Green 1980).
some relatively fundamental principles of projectile motion. In one

study designed to assess understanding of the principle that objects
move in straight lines in the absence of external forces, McCloskey,
Caramazza, and Green (1980) had subjects designate the path that a
ball would take upon emerging at high speed from the end of a curved
tube. The shapes of the tubes that were used are shown as problems
1 through 3 in figure 1. In problem 4 the subject was to imagine that
a metal ball was being swung in a circle at the end of a string in the
direction indicated in the diagram. (The path of motion is in a horizontal
plane, as it would be, e.g., if one were twirling the ball above one's
is senior vice president of BBN Laboratories

RAYMONDS. NICKERSON
Incorporated. He has a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Tufts
University and does research on human cognition and memory; recently
he has been involved in the development and testing of methods to
teach thinking skills in the classroom.
202 American Journal of Education

Nickerson
head.) The subject was asked to imagine that the string breaks when
the ball is in the position shown in problem 4 and to draw the resulting
path of the ball in the horizontal plane, ignoring air resistance.
For all of these problems, the correct answer is a straight line tangent
to the curve of motion at the point where the ball emerges from the
tube or the string is cut. About a third of the paths drawn by subjects
who had completed a high school physics course were curved, the
direction of curvature being the same as that followed when the ball
was in the tube or before the string was cut. Many of the subjects
appear to have believed that a ball forced to move in a curved trajectory
will continue to do so even after external forces no longer act upon
it and that the degree of the trajectory's curvature will depend on the
specifics of the trajectory when those forces were active or perhaps
on the length of time they were active.
In another study, Caramazza, McCloskey, and Green (1981) showed
undergraduate college students drawings of a pendulum ball swinging
on the end of a string. The students were asked to draw the path the
ball would take if the string were cut when the ball was located at the
points indicated and moving in the directions specified in figure 2.
About a third of the subjects who had at least one physics course at
either the high school or college level produced responses that were
consistent with a basic understanding of projectile motion. Common
misconceptions included the following beliefs: (1) the ball would continue
moving to the left if the string were cut when the pendulum was at
the extreme left in its swing, as shown in problem A; (2) the ball would
fall straight down under the condition shown in problem C; (3) the
path of the ball would follow a straight-line extension of the string
irrespective of when the string was cut; (4) the ball would continue
the arc of the pendulum briefly and then fall straight down. Some of
the subjects believed the ball would drop vertically if the string were
cut when it was exactly vertical, suggesting, as in 3 above, confusion
between the path of the ball and the direction in which the string was
"pointing" at the instant it was cut.
We should note that error rates obtained in such studies, high as
they are, may underestimate the amount of confusion in the minds
of the students. An incorrect answer is reasonably good evidence of
a lack of understanding; however, an ability to trace the correct tra-
jectories in these problems is no assurance that one understands pro-
jectile motion very deeply. For example, one might trace parabolic
curves for problems B, C, and D of the second study, believing that
the ball travels at constant speed along those curves rather than realizing
that such curves are traced because the ball accelerates vertically while
maintaining a relatively constant velocity horizontally.
February 1985 203

Problem A Problem B
/\ f\
'
\,, - /
S
/. ~/
I
\
S
Problem C Problem D
/ '\
with does nI led atIal toteetato

movig object fpicpe
that
are consistent withtefra law I
moin"TeS oe,hwvr
that
the felitS eltvl ml
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FIG.2.-Illustrationsandfor the
number of classes coclde pendulumta problems (from Caramazza,McCloskey,&
exeinewttewrdde
Greenlead1981).
naurallyto devlopmen
of nl afwbsimoesfmton
Some
of the modelsI evdneS eesmlr nsm
ytersbet
respects,topre-Newtonia cocp iossugtighaschmdl
Caramazza et al. (1981, p. 121) concluded that "real-worldexperience
be a
may
naural outcom of exe iec wihtewrd."otoh
with moving objects does not lead naturally to the extraction of principles
that are consistent with the formal laws of motion."They noted, however,
that the misconceptions of their subjects fell into a relatively small
number of classes and concluded that experience with the world does
lead naturally to development of only a few basic models of motion.
Some of the models evidenced by their subjects were similar, in some
respects, to pre-Newtonian conceptions, suggesting that such models
may be a natural outcome of experience with the world. "Most of the
subjects who drew curved pathways [in the first study] believed that
an object moving through a curved tube (or otherwise forced to travel
in a curved path) acquires a 'force' or 'momentum' that causes it to
continue in curvilinear motion for some time after it emerges from
the tube. However, the force or momentum eventually dissipates, and
the object's trajectory gradually becomes straight" (Caramazza et al.
1981, p. 114). The investigators noted the correspondence between
these beliefs and the medieval theory of impetus, which held that an

Nickerson
object set in motion acquires an impetus that tends to maintain that

motion, at least temporarily.
With respect to the practical implications of such findings, McCloskey
et al. point out the danger of educational approaches that treat students
as merely lacking in information rather than taking into account possible
strong preconceptions and misconceptions.
Rate of Change
There is evidence that many college students, including those majoring

in technical areas, do not understand the concept of rate of change
(Clement 1982b; Lochhead 1980, 1981; Minstrell 1982; Trowbridge
and McDermott 1980). In particular, they frequently confuse rate with
amount. This is shown in answers to questions involving such concepts
as velocity and position, acceleration and velocity, and inflation and
the value of money.
One example of confusion between velocity and position comes
from a study in which two balls were rolled down an inclined plane
on parallel tracks so that one ball passed the other (Trowbridge and
McDermott 1980). Students were asked if the balls ever had the same
speed. Positive answers were sometimes justified on the grounds that
they must have been going at the same speed at the moment when
they were adjacent. Some students argued that in order for one thing
to pass another, the one must be speeding up, or the other must be
slowing down.
In another study, students in two high school physics classes observed
a speed comparison demonstration in which ball A first passed ball B
and then slowed and was passed by ball B. When asked whether the
two balls ever were traveling at the same speed, only about half of the
students correctly decided in the affirmative. About 30 percent of them
confused same speed with same position. Moreover, some of the students
who were able to answer this question correctly and to support their
answer with a sound argument subsequently confused same position
with same speed in other contexts (Minstrell 1982).
Questions dealing with acceleration have yielded very high error
rates even among college-level science-oriented students. Lochhead
(1981) reported error rates for such questions in the range of 80-90
percent, and noted that relevant conventional education (e.g., two
semesters of calculus-based physics) does not seem to reduce the degree
of confusion very much.
Why is it so difficult to teach students the difference between rate
and amount or between changes in rate and rate? The answer is not
February 1985 205

clear. One suggested possibility is that the representation of rate re-

lationships by mathematical equations and graphs is inherently static
and does not facilitate an appreciation of the fact that the relationships
are actually dynamic (Clement, Lochhead, and Monk 1981; Clement,
Lochhead, and Soloway 1980; DiSessa 1980; Lochhead 1981). Lochhead
(1981) has reported some evidence that such relationships may be
conveyed more effectively in the language of computer programming
than as algebraic expressions. The idea is that representations in pro-
gramming languages are more suggestive of operations performed
on variables than are algebraic expressions. Lochhead has also suggested
that even greater facilitation in the teaching of rate concepts may be
obtained by using computer graphics to illustrate dynamically various
ways in which functionally related variables may change together.
Force
Minstrell (1982b) described an effort to get high school physics students

to understand the role of force in maintaining objects at rest. Minstrell's
interest in this problem stemmed from a belief that the static or "at
rest" condition is more complex than is generally acknowledged and
subject to a number of misconceptions that, if not corrected, can inhibit
the understanding of dynamic relationships involving the influence
of forces on moving objects.
Before providing any formal instruction regarding force in his ex-
perimental classes, Minstrell asked students to explain, in their own
terms, what keeps a book at rest on a table. Several misconceptions
regarding forces were elicited during the experiment. Relatively few
understood the notion that the upward and downward forces on the
book are equal. Many considered air, or air pressure, to be responsible
for keeping the book stationary. Among the students who believed
that the object stayed where it was by a combination of forces, many
believed that the downward forces must be greater than the upward
forces in order to hold the object down. The most common miscon-
ception was a failure to believe that the table exerted force.
In an effort to bring the students to understand that the table exerts
an upward force on the book equal to the downward force of gravity,
Minstrell gave a variety of demonstrations. These demonstrations in-
cluded placing a book in a student's outstretched hand, placing several
books in a student's hand, hanging a book from a spring, hanging a
very light object from the same spring, and having the instructor stand
on a table while reflecting a beam of light at a low angle off the table
to a wall in order to make clear that the table was depressed. With
each of these demonstrations, the students were asked to consider and

Nickerson
discuss the various forces involved. By the time the sequence of dem-
onstrations was finished, most of the students were convinced that the
table does exert an upward force on the book.
Understanding the effect of force on bodies in motion has proven
to be no less problematic than understanding the role of force on
bodies at rest. For example, Clement (1981b, 1982b) has presented
evidence showing that many students believe continuing motion implies
the presence of a continuing force in the direction of motion. As
already mentioned, this belief, which Clement refers to as the "motion-
implies-a-force" misconception, was noted by McCloskey et al. (1980)
in their study of students' understanding of projectile motion.
In a particularly compelling demonstration of this misconception,
Clement (1982b, p. 3) gave subjects the following problem, which is
illustrated in figure 3: "A coin is tossed from point A straight up into
the air and caught at point E. On the dot to the left of the drawing,
draw one or more arrows showing the direction of each force acting
on the coin when it is at point B. (Draw longer arrows for larger
forces.)" A large majority of college students, most of whom had taken
high school physics, answered this question incorrectly. The most com-
mon incorrect answer showed one force operating in the direction of
the motion of the coin and another operating in the opposite direction.
The first force typically was identified as the force applied originally
to get the coin moving upward and the second one was identified as
gravity. Clement also presented evidence that the "motion-implies-a-
force" misconception is highly resistant to change; even a large per-
centage of students who have completed a college-level course in me-
chanics with good grades are likely to have it.
Typical incorrect
Fh answer
Physicist's answer
T F D
Fg Fg
A *E
(Ignoring
air friction)
FIG. 3.-Illustration of the coin-toss problem (from Clement 1982b).
February 1985 207

Elementary Mathematics
Many studies have shown that errors that students make on procedural
(e.g., mathematical) tasks are often the consequence of rule-determined
behavior (Asklock 1976; Brown and Burton 1978; Davis 1980; Lankford
1972; Young and O'Shea 1981). Sometimes mistakes result from the
application of an incorrectly coded procedure-a procedure with a
flaw or "bug" in it-and sometimes they result from the application
of a perfectly good procedure in an inappropriate context. In the
latter case, one might say the individual has learned the procedure
well but does not understand the conditions under which it should be
applied.
Several investigators have cataloged the errors that are commonly
encountered with various types of problems in elementary mathematics.
One better-known effort is that of Bennett (1976) who analyzed nearly
1,600 subtraction problems performed by 33 10-year-old schoolchildren.
All of the problems involved subtracting two-digit numbers. In a recent
analysis of Bennett's data, Young and O'Shea (1981) classified 36 percent
of all errors as algorithmic errors. These errors were subclassified into
categories such as the following: (1) borrow when the subtrahend digit
is less than the minuend digit; (2) subtract the smaller number from
the larger; (3) always borrow; (4) write down zero if the subtrahend
is larger than the minuend.
The strategy used by Young and O'Shea to account for the algorithmic
errors they identified was to define a production system (Newell 1973)
that would produce correct answers and then make selective deletions
from the rule set or add rules that were appropriate to other arithmetical
tasks. They could account for about two-thirds of the algorithmic
errors in this fashion. They were also able to account for 15 common
errors identified by Brown and Burton (1978) with a correct production
system from which some rules had been deleted and others appropriate
for addition problems had been added. They claimed there was no
need to assume "wrong" rules in order to account for the types of
errors that were identified.
Arithmetic errors commonly made by schoolchildren have also been
studied by Davis (1980), who has postulated four specific "frames"that
in combination, he believes, predict many of these errors. These four
frames are as follows:
The primary-grade undifferentiated-binary operation frame: The

operation sign is ignored and the two arguments are always added.
The frame is initially acquired because when a child first learns

Nickerson
to add two numbers, addition is the only operation that is taught,

so the addition sign is superfluous. The superfluousness generalizes
to other signs that are introduced later.
The primary-grade addition frame: This frame demands two
digits as inputs. Consequently when it is used to do addition of
multi-digit numbers trouble is encountered when two numbers
do not have the same number of digits.
The primary-grade symmetric subtraction frame: The difference
between two numbers is found by subtracting, always, the smaller
number from the larger.
The label frame: This frame, which is appropriately used to
express a relationship such as 12 inches equals one foot, is er-
roneously used to express the relationship between number of
inches in a measurement and number of feet in the same mea-
surement. The appropriate way to express the latter relationship
is I = 12F where I represents the number of inches and F represents
the number of feet. Invocation of the label frame in this case
would produce the erroneous equation: 121 = F.
Matz (1980) has also used common errors as a basis for building a
theory of how high school students solve (correctly or incorrectly)
algebra problems. Errors are assumed, in many cases, to be the result
of reasonable attempts to apply previously acquired knowledge to new
situations. Her theory of high school algebra problem solving distin-
guishes two components: (1) base rules (rule knowledge that the student
has already acquired); and (2) extrapolation techniques (methods for
bridging the gap between known rules and unfamiliar problems).
Extrapolation techniques typically are used to find a way either to see
an unfamiliar problem as a familiar one or to revise a known rule so
it is applicable in a new situation. Sometimes these techniques work,
and sometimes they do not.
Two extrapolation techniques, generalization and linear decom-
position, seem to be the most frequently used and misused. For example,
an inappropriate use of generalization as an extrapolation technique
is failing to understand that the equation (X - 3) (X - 4) = 0 is
solvable because the right-hand term is zero and attempting to apply
the same process to (X - 5) (X - 7) = 3, obtaining X = 8 or X =
10. Linearity refers to decomposing a problem into components and
treating each component independently. Linear decomposition often
works as, for example, in the distributive law of multiplication over
addition. However, it does not always work; for example, if we de-
compose the expression VA + B by distributing its topmost operator
(square root) across its component terms, we obtain an erroneous
result. But the same operation (linear decomposition) is perfectly valid
February 1985 209

in the case of A (B + C). The operation is not wrong; the trouble

comes from failing to understand the conditions under which it should
be applied.
Matz (1980) distinguishes between extrapolation or planning errors
and processing or execution errors. The former are considered con-
ceptual errors, and they tend to be made by people who do not un-
derstand the domain. They arise because one attempts to apply in-
appropriately a technique that is appropriate in some circumstances.
Processing errors are not considered conceptual errors because they
are made (inconsistently) by skilled problem solvers as well as novices.
When processing errors are made, they are often detected and corrected
spontaneously.
In the aggregate, the results of these studies involving conceptual
difficulties in elementary mathematics reinforce the importance of
distinguishing between knowing how to perform an algorithmic pro-
cedure, or apply a heuristic principle, and understanding the conditions
under which the procedure should be performed, or the principle
applied. Further, they suggest that many of the errors that students
commonly make in doing elementary mathematics are more easily
attributed to a lack of the latter type of understanding than of the
former type. It is as though the students had many of the basic tools
required to do elementary math but did not understand how to use
them effectively.
Equations
An area of confusion in mathematics that deserves special mention

involves the understanding of simple algebraic equations. Equations,
which are used to represent quantitative relationships between two or
more variables, are ubiquitous in mathematics and the quantitative
sciences. A basic understanding of what an equation is would seem to
be fundamental to success in any mathematically oriented endeavor.
Any relationship that can be represented by a simple algebraic
expression can also be represented with words. Thus the relationship
represented by X = 2Y can also be expressed as: "There are twice as
many X's as there are 's" or "For every Y there are two X's." The
algebraic representation has the advantage of conciseness and of making
available the power of mathematics to develop the implications of sets
of relationships among several variables.
Once a problem has been expressed as an algebraic equation, its
solution can be obtained by applying a succession of transformation
rules. These rules involve rewriting expressions (combining like terms,

Nickerson
factoring, expanding) and applying the same operation to both sides

of an equation. There is a question how deeply one must understand
a problem in order to solve it in this fashion. To be sure, one must
understand what the transformation rules are and how to apply them,
but one need not have a clear grasp of the meaning of either the
original equation or any of its derived forms vis-a-vis the variables it
may represent.
The rules for solving algebraic equations are relatively straightforward
and learned easily by most secondary school students. More problematic
is the task of setting up equations in the first place. Word problems-
problems that involve a narrative description of quantitative relationships
among variables-seem to give students the greatest difficulty. One
possible explanation is that students frequently do not understand
what an equation means. Moreover, even if one is able to translate a
verbal description of a problem into an algebraic form, this is not
necessarily good evidence of a full understanding of the relationships
involved, because, as Paige and Simon (1966) have noted, some algebra
word problems in a single variable can be solved by purely syntactic
methods that do not depend on comprehension of the meaning of
the problem.
One study of over 70,000 students in the United States, who were
9, 13, and 17 years of age, revealed that a large percentage could solve
simple textbook problems that could be calculated by mechanical ap-
plication of familiar computational algorithms. However, students fre-
quently applied an algorithm in such a way as to suggest that they
failed to understand the task in sufficient depth to know whether the
algorithm applied was really appropriate to the problem (Carpenter,
Corbitt, Kepner, Lindquist, et al. 1980).
Several other studies have also shown that a major difficulty that
many students have with mathematics, especially beginning algebra,
involves the translation of relationships expressed in natural language
into corresponding relationships expressed in algebraic equations, and
vice versa. For example, Rosnick and Clement (1980; see also Clement
1982b; Clement et al. 1981; Clement et al. 1979, 1980; Kaput and
Clement 1979; Rosnick 1980) report that 37 percent of a group of
150 first-year engineering students at the University of Massachusetts
were unable to write an equation to represent correctly the relationship:
"There are six times as many students as professors," using S for the
number of students and P for the number of professors. The most
common error the students made was to write the "reversed"equation,
6S = P. Fifty-seven percent of 47 nonscience majors taking college
algebra were unable to perform the same task (Clement et al. 1981).
About 73 percent of the students tested in the study reported by
February 1985 211

Rosnick and Clement (1980) gave an incorrect equation to represent

the fact that, at a certain restaurant, for every four cheesecakes that
were sold, five strudels were sold. The most common mistake in this
case was the reversed equation, 4C = 5S. Interviews with students
revealed that 6S = P was often read as "there are 6 students for every
professor"or, conversely, S = 6P as "one student for every 6 professors."
In addition to this misconception about the use of letters in equations,
these students also misunderstood the meaning of the equals sign and
read it as "for every" rather than "is numerically equal to." Rosnick
and Clement's (1980) explanation for the reversed equation error is
that the student confuses the use of a letter S as a label for a concrete
entity, student, with its use as a quantitative variable, the number of
students. They suggest the equation S = 6P should be read: "The
numberof students is equal to 6 times the numberof professors."
If this conjecture is correct, and the reversed equation phenomenon
is a consequence, at least in part, of confusion between using a letter
as the label for a concrete entity and using it as the name for a quantitative
variable, the misconception should cause problems in other contexts.
Consider, for example, the familiar force equation of Newtonian me-
chanics, F = kMA. If he interprets M and A as labels for mass and
acceleration, the thoughtful student may balk at the notion of multiplying
such disparate entities: What could it possibly mean to multiply mass
by acceleration? If, on the other hand, he interprets M as representing
the amount of mass and A as the amountof acceleration, each expressed
in appropriate units, the mystery disappears or does not arise. The
best time to make this distinction clear presumably occurs long before
one encounters high school physics, and probably when one is first
introduced to the concept of multiplication.
Apparently translation problems are not restricted to high school
students and college undergraduates. Lochhead (1980) gave the fol-
lowing problem to an assortment of about 200 university faculty and
150 high school teachers: "Write one sentence in English that gives
the same information as the following equation: A = 7S. A is the
number of assemblers in a factory. S is the number of solderers in a
factory." Excluding faculty who refused to respond and those who
failed to give an indication of faculty status, Lochhead got an error
rate of about 40 percent (about 35 percent for university professors
and about 46 percent for high school teachers). Even with university
professors in the physical sciences (physics, chemistry, mathematics,
and engineering), the error rate was about 14 percent. For high school
teachers of physical sciences it was about 39 percent.
How to account for the difficulty people have with mathematical
word problems is a question of both theoretical and practical interest.

Nickerson
In particular, one would like to know how much of this difficulty is a

problem in reading comprehension and how much of it is a difficulty
in understanding the mathematical concepts involved. (In this regard,
one would also like to know how much the particular problem ex-
emplified by the 6S = P example stems from, or is exacerbated by,
the convention of not representing the multiplication operation with
an explicit symbol. Would the same confusion occur as frequently if
including the multiplication symbol was required, so the student-pro-
fessor equation, for example, would have to be written as S = 6 x
P?)
In an effort to determine the extent to which reversed-equation
errors reflect conceptual misunderstandings, as opposed to simple
carelessness, Clement et al. (1981; see also Clement 1982a) interviewed
15 subjects who were asked to think aloud while solving problems,
such as the students-and-professors problem. As a result of these in-
terviews, they concluded that reversed-equation errors are not caused
by carelessness, for the most part, but reflect misconceptions about
the meaning of variables and equations. Moreover, they identified two
sources of the reversed-equation error. One source, which they called
"word-ordermatching"and Paige and Simon (1966) have called "syntactic
translation," involves a direct mapping of words onto the symbols of
an equation. The hypothesis is that the subject simply maps the order
of the key words in the problem statement onto the order of the
symbols in the equation, so "There are six (6) times as many students
(S) as professors (P)"becomes directly "6S = P." Such a direct translation
can be made without any real thought about the relationship involved.
The second source of the error, they suggested, is the application of
what they call the "static comparison" method. In this case, the student
appears to understand that the sentence implies that the student pop-
ulation is much larger than the professor population, evidenced on
occasion by the drawing of a diagram showing six S's for one P. However,
he believes the correct way to express the relationship is to place the
larger number with the symbol representing the larger group; thus,
6S = P. Apparently, the expression "6S"is used to represent the larger
group and "P" the smaller.
Davis (1980) attributes the reversed-equation phenomenon to faulty
retrieval from memory. Specifically, he assumes that people who make
the error have acquired two "frames,"which he refers to as the "label
frame" and the "numerical-variables frame," during their training in
mathematics. Each of these frames is a useful one when applied ap-
propriately. The reversal error occurs when the situation calls for the
use of a numerical-variables frame but the individual erroneously
makes use of the label frame. Davis also suggests that frames that are
February 1985 213

acquired early and developed well may prove to be extremely persistent,

so much so that they may sometimes continue to be retrieved inap-
propriately long after one has become fully cognizant of the conditions
under which they are or are not used. Regarding how to remediate
the reversal error, Davis advocates making sure that students are aware
of both frames and of the likelihood of retrieving the incorrect one.
Rosnick and Clement (1980) also present some data supporting the
notion that the reversed-equation phenomenon is based on deeply
seated misconceptions that are difficult to remediate by training. They
report trying a variety of teaching strategies on college students who
had made the reversed-equation error with the students-professors
problem; results were disappointing. Some students learned to write
the equations correctly yet still gave indications of a lack of conceptual
understanding such as reverting back to a reversed equation after
initially correcting the reversal mistake, accepting the correct equation
but reversing the meaning of the original problem, or acknowledging
that the correct equation "works"but admitting ignorance as to why.
They concluded that the fact that students can write down the correct
answer to a problem does not necessarily indicate that they understand
what they are doing.
The results of these studies raise a number of questions regarding
why the simplest of algebraic equations are so easily misunderstood.
What is the origin of such difficulties? Are the misconceptions specific
to the contexts in which they have been studied, or are they symptomatic
of more general confusion? What is it about the methods that are
used to teach mathematics that allows such problems to go undetected?
More important, what is it about those methods that permits the de-
velopment of such misconceptions in the first place?
Perhaps the question of greatest practical importance is how such
misconceptions can be avoided. The evidence suggests that remediation
is only marginally effective; if a misconception is established early and
allowed to persist for a few years, it is likely to be extremely resistant
to correction. It would seem, therefore, that the development of teaching
methods that would minimize the possibility of misunderstanding and
facilitate the detection of misconceptions when they did arise should
have a high priority in mathematics instruction.
Comment
These examples of misunderstanding supposedly familiar concepts,

relationships, principles, and processes are drawn from a small number
of recent investigations. In no sense do they constitute the results of

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a systematic attempt to identify the major kinds of conceptual difficulties

that students have in particular subjects. However, if the specific prob-
lems considered are at all representative of the types of confusion that
students carry away from formal educational programs, something is
radically wrong. It would appear that a startling percentage of students
fail to understand some of the most basic ideas and operations, with
which their education should have made them familiar. Moreover,
even though they involve fundamental concepts, some of the miscon-
ceptions that students develop appear to go undetected because a
superficial knowledge of how to manipulate formulas and solve textbook
problems may suffice to carry one through standard course require-
ments.
If this is indeed the case, it would seem reasonable to ask what might
be done about it. How can understanding be enhanced? How can a
teacher tell whether a student understands a concept or not? How
can one tell whether one understands something oneself? When a
student clearly does not understand a concept, how is the teacher to
bring about the understanding?
These are difficult questions, and before one can hope to make any
headway on them, one must have a reasonably workable idea of what
it means to understand something.
What Does It Mean to Understand?
What it means to understand is a disarmingly simple question to ask

but one that is likely to be anything but simple to answer. The dictionary
is of little help in telling us that to understand means "to grasp the
meaning of," "to have thorough technical acquaintance with," or "to
be thoroughly familiar with the character and propensities of" (Webster's
New CollegiateDictionary1976). What does it mean to grasp the meaning
of, to have a thorough technical acquaintance with, . . . ? One might
appeal to intuition; perhaps the concept of understanding is one that
we understand intuitively. Certainly we find it easy to say "I understand"
or "I do not understand" in specific situations. Furthermore, we believe
that such statements are meaningful and that they convey some in-
formation about our state of mind. But if pressed to say exactly what
one means-if asked to make the same point without using the word
"understand" or a close synonym, such as "comprehend"-one might
find it difficult to do so. Moreover, intuition is not to be trusted in
this regard. To be sure, we are aware of understanding some things
but not others, or of understanding some things better than others;
February 1985 215

however, sometimes we are embarrassed to discover that something

we thought we understood well, we really did not understand at all.
Consider the relatively straightforward question of what it means
to understand a word or term. One might take the position that one
understands a word if and only if one can define it correctly. But this
answer will not do. Clearly, it is possible to understand a word well
enough to use it appropriately in specific contexts without being able
to produce a definition that is unambiguous in all contexts. Hofstadter
(1981) illustrates this point nicely by reference to the concept of "first
lady." Most Americans, he suggests, would probably define "first lady"
as "the wife of the president" and not give it any further thought. Yet
this definition is not appropriate for Canada, so one might want to
generalize it to refer to "the wife of the head of state." But then what
does one say about Great Britain? Does it have no "first lady?" If one
insists that it does, who comes to mind? The queen? The Queen
Mother? Margaret Thatcher? Mr. Thatcher? Hofstadter (1981, p. 18)
points out that even the very general definition "spouse of the head
of state" does not encompass all the uses that are made of the term:
In Haiti until recently the title of First Lady belonged to Simone

Duvalier, the widow of the former president, Francois ("Papa
Doc") Duvalier. She is also the mother of the current president,
Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier. Not long ago there was a
bitter power struggle between Simone Duvalier and her daughter-
in-law Michelle Bennett Duvalier, the wife of "Baby Doc," for the
title of First Lady. In the end the younger woman seems to have
gained the upper hand, taking the title "FirstLady of the Republic"
away from her mother-in-law, who in compensation was given
the lifetime title "First Lady of the Revolution."
Hofstadter's point is that no matter how one defines the term-for

example, "the spouse (or former spouse) of the present (or former)
head of state"-one can probably come up with some acceptable use
of the term that does not fit. Indeed, that seems to be true. When one
speaks, for example, of "the first lady of the theater," one seems to be
using the term in a meaningful way, yet the connotation in this case
involves neither "spouse" nor "head of state."
The concept "first lady" is not unique in its resistance to precise
definition. Our everyday speech is full of terms that serve us well but
that are difficult to define in such a way as to capture the essence of
a term's connotations in all contexts. "First lady" has a rather different
meaning in the context of "first lady of the United States" than in the
context "first lady of the theater." A definition that would be broad

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enough to encompass both would probably be too broad to do justice

to either. What, then, does it mean to understand the concept "first
lady?"
Understanding is a context-dependent concept. What it means to
understand a game of chess may differ in some fundamental sense
from what it means to understand the concept "first lady." On the
other hand, there are undoubtedly some things that can be said about
understanding that are relatively independent of domain, and it is on
such aspects that we will focus here.
The question of what it means to understand is raised here, not
with the expectation of answering it in a definitive way, but for the
purpose of considering some of the facets of an important and fun-
damental concept. If understanding is a primary goal of education,
an effort to understand understanding would seem to be an obligation,
even if one is convinced that it is likely to be only a partially successful
effort. The following ruminations represent an attempt to identify
some of the issues that must be dealt with if the concept (condition,
process) of understanding is to be understood.
The Nonbinary Nature of Understanding
It is clear that understanding can vary in degree or completeness. This

point is demonstrated easily with reference to the understanding of
simple assertions. One cannot understand, in any very deep sense, the
assertion "A whale is a mammal," if one does not have some idea of
what a mammal is. But just as clearly, it is not necessary to know very
much about a mammal to understand the statement to some degree.
Using this example, one does not need to have a very extensive knowl-
edge of mammals to understand that whales are members of a class
of entities known by that name.
The observation that the sentence would be understood more deeply
by a person who knows what a mammal is than by one who does not
leads to the more general observation that one's understanding must
depend on the amount of knowledge one has about the concepts
involved. In other words, the degree to which one understands an
assertion must depend on the richness of the conceptual context in
which the assertion can be interpreted. The reader is invited to consider
the assertions in table 1 and to attempt to order them from most to
least completely understood. One suspects the ordering would differ
from reader to reader, reflecting individual differences in interests
and knowledge. One also suspects, however, that most readers will
February 1985 217

TABLE 1
StatementsIllustrating That Degree of UnderstandingIs Determinedin

Part by One's Knowledgeof the Topic
The reader is invited to order the statements from most to least completely
understood.
Italy is farther south than Sweden.
A directrix of a ruled surface is a curve through which a line generating

the surface always passes.
Some bacteria are chemotactic, some are phototactic, and some are
magnetotactic.
The human eye contains many more rods than cones.
The child is father of the man.
The French revolution gave birth to the "Reign of Terror."
Fibrin arrays are structured so as to be as conducive to the breakdown

of fibrin as to polymerization.
According to the cosmological principle, the large-scale structure of the

universe is both homogeneous and isotropic.
This statement is false.
If the statement "This statement is false" is true, it is false; whereas if it

is false, it is true.
A soft answer turns away wrath.
Normally water turns to ice when its temperature is lowered to 32 degrees

Fahrenheit or below.
Unavoidability and reducibility are two key ideas that were used in a
proof of the theorem that four colors are sufficient.to color any planar
map so that no two adjacent countries have the same color.
Rembrandt painted "The Night Watch," which currently is on display in

the Reichsmuseum in Amsterdam, Holland.
Matter in a black hole is infinitely compressed.
Brothers and sisters have I none, but this man's father is my father's son.
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In Tokyo speed limits are strictlyenforced.
A squareis a rectanglewhose sides are of equal length and whose vertices

form 90-degree angles.
The p-dimensional Betti numbers BPof an orientablemanifold which is

homeomorphicto the set of pointsof an n-dimensionalsimplicialcomplex
satisfy:
Bg = BS-P,
where G is the group for which chainsand homology groups are defined.
feel that they understand some assertions much more completely than
others.
For another example of the fact that understanding can vary in
degree or completeness, consider the familiar "equals"sign (=), which
surely must be one of the most widely used of all mathematical symbols.
It is among the first mathematical symbols students encounter, and it
is used extensively in mathematics courses at all levels. Understanding
the meaning of this symbol would seem to be a fundamental requirement
for mathematical competence, even at introductory levels of mathe-
matics. However, there is reason to believe that many students, even
after several year of mathematics courses, do not have a very complete
understanding of what the equals sign means or can mean. This lack
of understanding can lead to serious conceptual confusion in the inter-
pretation of rather simple equations, as the findings described in an
earlier section of this paper demonstrate.
Realization that the expression to the left of an equals sign is, in
some sense, equal to the expression to the right constitutes some
understanding of the meaning of the sign. Certainly this is better than
thinking it means that one is to add the expression on the left of the
sign to the expression on the right of the sign. However, there is more
to understanding this sign than that.
In fact the equals sign has several meanings, even in elementary
mathematics. To illustrate, in each of the three following expressions,
the symbol means something distinctly different from what it means
in the others:
X2 + X - 12 = (X + 4)(X - 3)
Y = 2X + 3
X2 + 3X - 10 = 0.
February 1985 219

The first expression is a tautology; the second represents a functional

relationship; and the third is a constraint equation. One wonders to
what extent these distinctions are made clear when students learn to
use the sign in these various ways.
These examples do not exhaust the many uses of the equals sign
but perhaps do represent the three most common situations encountered
in mathematics through algebra. Another usage, widely seen in the
context of computer programming, is that of an assignment operater;
in this case, it means "replace the value of the variable on the left with
the value of the expression on the right," and it permits such math-
ematically bizarre expressions as X = X + 1.
Recognizing that understanding can vary in degree or completeness
should preclude our treatment of the concept as a binary one. Practicality
dictates that we often speak of understanding, or of failing to understand;
however, that should not beguile us into thinking of understanding
as an all-or-none affair. By the same token, one's understanding of
something should probably not be thought of as right or wrong, but
rather as more or less right and more or less complete.
Although in particular instances understanding may appear to wax
and wane ("Now I see it; now I don't"), in general we expect one's
understanding of something to increase more or less regularly over
time. Miyake (1981) has put forth the idea that understanding may
develop by degrees through the acquisition of a sequence of progressively
more complex and encompassing concepts. She characterizes under-
standing a mechanical device as the ability to explain its function in
terms of relationships among its submechanisms. Three key ideas
emerge from her account of what this entails: the importance of the
distinction between function and mechanism, the idea that stages of
understanding map onto the levels in a hierarchy of function-mechanism
relationships, and the idea that progression through such a hierarchy
is often accompanied by (perhaps facilitated by) changes in one's point
of view.
With respect to the function-mechanism distinction, understanding
a device involves understanding both what it does (its function) and
how it does it (its behavior as a mechanism). The idea that levels of
understanding map onto a hierarchy of function-mechanism relation-
ships may be illustrated by the task of understanding the operation
of a sewing machine. At one level, the function of a sewing machine
may be described as making stitches in fabric. To understand how this
is accomplished, one must know something about the structure of the
machine and how certain critical parts interact with each other. Yet
to understand the operation of these parts, one must understand their

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individual functions (e.g., if the machine makes a two-thread stitch,

the function of the needle is to position one of two threads and the
function of the bobbin is to position the other); furthermore, under-
standing how these individual functions are accomplished may require
an even more detailed knowledge of mechanisms, and so on.
With respect to the idea that the development of a relatively thorough
understanding involves, or may be facilitated by, changes in one's
conceptual point of view, Miyake presents some evidence that such
changes tend to occur when a person is struggling to figure out an
aspect of a process that has not been understood yet. Conceptual point
of view is the vantage point from which one (metaphorically) looks at
the device one is trying to understand (e.g., from a distance, from up
close, from above, from the inside).
Reading Miyake's comments about developing an understanding of
how a sewing machine works aroused my curiosity and made me want
to understand the process myself. I first consulted The WayThings Work
(1967), which gave a narrative description supplemented by diagrams
of how the needle and bobbin interact to produce stitches. The account
gave me some understanding of the process, but I was unsatisfied.
This understanding included the knowledge that the needle pushes
one thread through the fabric and, upon withdrawing, leaves a loop
of thread beneath the fabric through which a shuttle advances the
bobbin and the thread that trails from it. But some questions remained.
How does the mechanism insure that the loop of thread left by the
needle is large enough for the shuttle to pass through it? Why is any
loop left at all; why does the thread not return with the needle as the
latter withdraws from the fabric? What moves the shuttle through the
loop in the thread? And how is it that whatever moves the shuttle
does not also get caught in the loop? And so on. Saying these questions
remained after reading about the process in The Way Things Workis,
in fact, not quite accurate. To say that they "remained" suggests that
I had them before reading the account. Before reading the account,
I did not understand enough about the process to have asked these
questions. The fact that I could ask them after reading it is evidence
that some modicum of understanding (or possibly misunderstanding)
had been acquired. It is interesting that ignorance-more accurately,
awareness of ignorance-at one level can be evidence of understanding
at another level. In the absence of some degree of the general un-
derstanding that prompts more specific questions, one does not know
enough to be aware of one's ignorance. Perhaps this, in a small way,
illustrates the paradox of knowledge; the more one learns, the more
one comes to realize how profound one's ignorance really is.
February 1985 221

Understandingand Expertise
Given that understanding may differ in degree and completeness,

what does it mean to understand something relatively deeply and
completely? One way of thinking about understanding evokes the
notion of expertise. One understands a concept (principle, process,
or whatever) to the degree that what is in one's head regarding that
concept corresponds to what is in the head of an expert in the relevant
field. Trowbridge and McDermott (1980, p. 1020) have this to say
about what it means for a student to understand concepts in physics:
"We may consider as an indicator of degree of understanding the
extent to which a student's understanding corresponds to that of a
physicist, i.e., the extent to which the student can define a particular
concept in an acceptable operational manner, distinguish it from related
but different concepts, and apply it successfully." They note that such
a definition leaves unsolved the problem of how to assess degree of
understanding. Further, they note that good performance on course
examinations is an unreliable indication of the type of understanding
that would permit the application of a concept to the behavior of real-
world objects.
One of the ways in which expert physicists' conceptualizations of
problems differ from those of novices is with respect to degree of
abstractness of the concepts involved. Evidence of this comes from a
study in which advanced and beginning physics students sorted 24
physics problems into categories based on similarities of solution (Chi,
Feltovich, and Glaser 1981). The performance of the two groups was
similar in some respects (number of categories produced, percentage
of problems captured by the four largest categories), but the classifi-
cations differed for the two groups, as did the bases for assigning
problems to categories. The beginners tended to focus on a problem's
surface structure, such as the objects referred to explicitly in the problem
statement (e.g., inclined planes, pulleys, springs) and the physical con-
figuration described in the problem; the advanced students tended to
classify in terms of major physics principles that they could use to
solve problems (e.g., the laws of the conservation of energy and of
momentum).
In a subsequent experiment in which chosen problems could be
partitioned either by surface characteristics or by physics principles,
Chi et al. (1981) found that a beginning physics student classified
according to surface features and an advanced student classified ac-
cording to physics principles ("deep structure");an intermediate student
(fourth-year undergraduate physics major) did a little of both. When

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asked to specify problem features that led them to adopt their chosen
approaches, novices and experts gave quite different answers. Novices
mentioned literal objects and terms contained in the problem statement;
experts were much more likely to mention both states and conditions
of the physical situation described by the problem and derived or
"second order" features not mentioned explicitly in the problem state-
ment.
The expert brings to a problem situation a repertoire of useful
hypotheses about problem types, knowledge about how to test those
hypotheses efficiently, and knowledge about what to do if and when
a hypothesis is confirmed or supported (Chase and Simon 1973; Hayes-
Roth 1978). There is some evidence that experts focus quickly on one
or more hypotheses as they begin to process (e.g., read) a problem
description and that, once formed, a tentative hypothesis guides the
acquisition and processing of additional descriptive information. In
other words, compared to novices, experts look for specific information
much earlier in the process. To use a distinction that is currently
popular, one might say that the expert's approach involves more "top-
down" processing than the novice's.
A way to characterize the difference between an expert's under-
standing of a problem and that of a novice is with respect to the
richness of the knowledge base from which the understanding derives.
While both novices and experts must make use of the memory's stored
knowledge to solve problems, findings showing that experts tend to
obtain solutions faster and typically verbalize a smaller number of
steps in the solution process (Larkin, McDermott, Simon and Simon
1980) suggest that the relevant knowledge they possess may be stored
in larger chunks. The fact that experts have a wealth of knowledge
about a problem domain permits them to classify problems as abstractly
defined types, to select and apply approaches known to be appropriate,
to anticipate the types of solutions that must be obtained, and to judge
the plausibility of solutions that have been found. Novices cannot do
these things as effectively as experts because they lack the concepts
and procedural knowledge on which these abilities are based.
However, the question arises whether experts differ from novices
in their ability to deal with problems that are not represented in their
prototype repertoires. Johnson et al. (1980) have been able to identify
certain physics problems that appear to represent "holes" in typical
physics curricula in the sense that problems of these types are not
covered in widely used texts. Some of these problems have a garden-
path aspect inasmuch as the "obvious"solutions turn out to be incorrect;
even physics professors often were found to have difficulties with
them.
February 1985 223

These investigators concluded that it is important not only to acquire

a repertoire of problem prototypes in a given domain but also to learn
how to apply one's knowledge of a domain to nonprototypical situations.
The ability to deal with nonprototypical situations would seem to
require a deeper understanding of a domain than does the ability to
deal with prototypical situations. In the latter case, one need only be
able to match patterns and invoke known methods. The knowledge
that is necessary to support this type of expertise can be represented,
at least conceptually, as a set of situation-action rules, rules that are
expressed in the form, "In situation A, do B."The limitation is apparent:
if one finds oneself in a situation that is not represented among one's
set of rules, the knowledge base will fail to provide a prescription for
effective action. While it seems highly likely that experts do have a
large repertoire of problem prototypes, or of situation-action rules, it
also seems likely that this is not the whole story of expertise. Other
things being equal, the individual who can deal effectively with truly
novel situations, situations not represented in his prototype repertoire,
would seem to have a better understanding of a domain than an
individual who lacks this ability.
Understanding and Representations
Numerous investigators of human problem solving and developers of

heuristic procedures for solving problems by computer have stressed
the importance of problem representation. Some writers have gone
so far as to assert that finding an appropriate way to represent a
problem is the single most important step in assuring that one un-
derstands the problem and in effecting a solution (Larkin 1980; Greeno
1980; Nilsson 1971; Simon and Hayes 1976). Comprehending the
structure of relationships in a problem may, in some cases, be tantamount
to solving the problem or at least to clarifying what is needed to solve
the problem.
Larkin (1980) suggests that there are several kinds of understanding
based on the nature of the entities used in the understander's internal
problem representation. In particular, she distinguishes among naive
representations, scientific representations, and mathematical repre-
sentations. In all three cases, the representations are thought of as
semantic networks, the differences among them being the nature of
the concept nodes and the ways in which they are interconnected. A
naive representation of a physics problem, for example, is likely to be
based on the words (names of objects) and relationships mentioned
explicitly in the problem statement. Its construction depends primarily

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on the general skills that the problem solver has learned to process
in English prose. A scientific representation of the same problem
would contain entities representing principles, operations, or rela-
tionships that define physics as a discipline or area of knowledge. The
construction of such a representation requires not only knowledge of
how to process English prose but also knowledge of the entities typically
found in physics problems and of their relationships.
A scientific representation is more abstract than a naive representation
because a single scientific representation can accommodate many naive
representations. An object or collection of objects that might appear
in a naive representation can be treated as a system in a scientific
representation. Larkin suggests that the greater degree of abstraction
in scientific representations is central to what understanding means.
Within a specific area of knowledge, the difference between an expert
and a novice lies in the fact that the expert is more likely than the
novice to be able to cast a new problem into a familiar scientific rep-
resentation. Two problems that look very different in terms of naive
representations may be identical in terms of their scientific represen-
tations, and the expert, by virtue of having the knowledge required
to construct scientific representations, is more likely than the novice
to be able to deal with new problems as familiar ones to which known
and proven techniques may be applied.
Mathematical representations are even more abstract than scientific
representations since one equation can characterize several scientific
representations. Although expert problem solvers, at least in the physical
sciences, use mathematical representations effectively, Larkin argues
that the key difference between expert and novice problem solvers
lies in the ability to construct and use scientific representations. Evidence
suggests that scientists typically do a large amount of thinking about
a problem in terms of scientific representations before getting to the
point of writing equations. Indeed, several investigators of the differences
between expert and novice problem solvers have noted the greater
tendency of experts to analyze a problem qualitatively before attempting
a quantitative representation (Larkin et al. 1980; McDermott and Larkin
1978; Simon and Simon 1978; Chi et al. 1981). Novices appear to be
more likely than experts to try to translate a problem directly into
quantitative equations.
Understanding and Dynamic Representations
DeKleer and Brown (1980) equate one's understanding of a system

and its underlying mechanisms with one's mental model, or "envi-
February 1985 225

sionment," of that system. By envisionment they mean a dynamic

model, a sort of mental simulation of the behavior of a mechanism,
the kind of knowledge that permits one to run a qualitative simulation
in the mind's eye. According to this view, understanding a system is
being able to infer its behavior from a knowledge of its structure and
the cause-effect relationships among its components. A test of the
adequacy of an envisionment is its ability to provide a basis for correctly
answering unanticipated questions about the behavior of the system,
especially under novel or faulty conditions.
There are certain principles that an adequate envisionment must
adhere to; most important are the causality principle and the no-
function-in-structure principle. The causality principle states that every
event represented in a model of the system must have a direct cause,
which is to say that any change of state must be explainable in terms
of its immediate antecedents without reference to indirect causes. Ac-
cording to the no-function-in-structure principle, the explanation of
the behavior of a system's component should not refer to or presuppose
an understanding of the operation of the overall system.
DeKleer and Brown illustrate how easy it is to violate these principles,
particularly the second one, in explaining the behavior of even rather
simple systems such as a common door bell, or buzzer, which is composed
of a clapper, a switch, a coil, and a battery. For example, the statement
"the clapper-switch closes causing the coil to conduct a current," which
one would not be surprised to find in a description of a buzzer's
operation, violates the no-function-in-structure principle because it
presupposes a source of current in the circuit. "Furthermore,"DeKleer
and Brown (1980, p. 6) point out, "it presupposes that the switch, coil,
and battery are all arranged in a very particular way, and that when
the switch closes it necessarily passes current. Switches in general do
not pass current; they only pass current if they are connected to
batteries and wires in particular configurations. Although it may be
true for this buzzer that the switch passes current, we can only say so
because we already understand how it works." It is important to note
that DeKleer and Brown are not simply making the point that expla-
nations often assume some knowledge on the part of the person(s) to
whom they are given. They are claiming that in many cases the knowl-
edge that is assumed is in fact knowledge of the mechanism or process
that is to be explained.
Again the buzzer example helps illustrate the fact that understanding
is not an all-or-nothing affair; furthermore, it serves to illustrate that
even a model of a mechanism that would provide a basis for correct
answers to some unanticipated questions may not be complete. Consider
DeKleer and Brown's description (1980, p. 5) of the buzzer's behavior:

Nickerson
"The clapper-switch of the buzzer closes, which causes the coil to

conduct a current, thereby generating an electromagnetic field which
in turn pulls the clapper arm away from the switch contact, thereby
opening the switch, which shuts off the magnetic field, allowing the
clapper arm to return to its closed position, which then starts the
whole process over again." DeKleer and Brown point out that although
this certainly is a description of the buzzer's operation, it represents
a very limited understanding of the mechanism. From this description
one could not, for example, answer such questions as, "What happens
if the leads of the battery or those of the coil are reversed?" or "What
happens if the switch arm is made lighter or if a second clapper switch
is added to the circuit?"
One could have a model of the mechanism that would provide a
basis for correct answers to such questions yet still be incomplete.
DeKleer and Brown point out, for example, that a fuller understanding
of the buzzer's operation would involve the notion of momentum.
Unless one understands the concept of momentum, one is at a loss
to explain how the arm is raised high enough so that upon falling it
strikes the clapper with enough force to make a sound, because the
current and magnetic field, which lift the clapper arm, dissipate as
soon as the arm is moved enough to break contact with the clapper.
Clearly one who understands the role of momentum in the buzzer's
operation understands the mechanism better than one who does not.
Nevertheless, this does not answer the question of what we would
consider a full understanding of this mechanism to be. Does one fully
understand the operation of the buzzer if one has a limited under-
standing of electricity, electromagnetism, acoustics, and hearing?
Any useful model of a mechanism should permit one to answer
unanticipated questions about the mechanism or to predict how it
would behave under specified conditions. However, qualitatively dif-
ferent models may highlight different aspects of the process. One
model might facilitate answering some types of questions and a different
model might facilitate answering others. Stevens and Collins (1980;
see also Collins, Brown, and Larkin 1980; Stevens and Collins 1977)
suggest that understanding a complex system is facilitated by having
several representations of the same system. Indeed, one way of char-
acterizing an expert, according to this view, is as a person who not
only has multiple procedural representations for a given system or
process but also knows how to invoke the individual models to advantage
and how to relate them to each other. By a procedural representation,
they too mean a representation that can be "run"in order to determine
how the system would behave under specified conditions. The 'runability"
of these models is what gives them their predictive or explanatory power.
February 1985 227

Learning, in this view, primarily involves elaborating and refining models

or, conversely, correcting them when they are discovered to be wrong.
Understanding and Analogies
Analogies are a type of representation that warrants separate mention.

Analogies can play a role both as tutorial aids and as sources of hy-
potheses. In the first case, in which an analogy is used to help explain
an unfamiliar relationship in terms of a familiar one, the relationships
in the domains of both analogs are presumably understood by the
teacher, whereas only those in one of them are assumed to be understood
by the student. The analogy is used to extend the knowledge of the
student in the less familiar domain. It is used as a vehicle for transferring
knowledge from the familiar domain to the unfamiliar one.
The second use of analogies, that of providing a source of hypotheses,
has the potential of extending the knowledge (with respect to the less
well-known domain) even of the person who already understands the
given, known domain with respect to those properties for which the
analogy is known to hold. Given the knowledge that domains X and
Y are alike with respect to properties A, B, and C and that domain X
is also characterized by the property D, it seems reasonable to hypothesize
that D may hold for Y as well as for X. Of course, for such a hypothesis
to be interesting scientifically, it would have to be testable. The usefulness
of the analogy in this case stems from the fact that in its absence one
might not have thought to hypothesize the additional property in
domain Y.
Gentner (1982) distinguishes between analogies that are used for
explanatory purposes and those that are used primarily for expressive
or affective purposes. The former are used to explain and predict and
are more likely to be found in scientific writing; the latter are used to
describe and evoke and are more likely to be found in literature.
Explanatory and expressive analogies are likely to differ, Gentner
suggests, with respect to the importance that is attached to their various
characteristics. In particular, explanatory analogies are likely to place
more emphasis on clarity, abstractness, scope, and systematicity than
do expressive analogies, whereas expressive analogies are likely to
place a higher value on the richness of the associations involved. Clarity
is an essential characteristic of good explanatory analogies. Expressive
analogies may also be clear; however, clarity is not a necessary condition
for their effectiveness. (Sometimes it may be that expressive, poetic
metaphors permit the reader to "read into" them affective properties
that the writer may not have explicitly considered.)

Nickerson
Many writers have stressed the importance to the scientific enterprise

of being able to see similarities that typically go unnoticed. Bronowski
(1965, p. 13) has defined science succinctly as "the search for unity in
hidden likenesses." It has been argued that the ability to see hidden
likenesses is one of the things that distinguishes great from mediocre
scientists. The ability that some scientists have shown to detect previously
undetected regularities, relatedness, and structure has led to insights
that have resulted in some of the great unifying principles of science.
An especially important aspect of this ability to see hidden likenesses
is the ability to apply organizing concepts and principles from one
knowledge domain to another. Gould (1980, p. 66) puts it this way:
"if genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of
interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields."
Bronowski (1965) points to the Rutherford-Bohr planetary model of
the atom as one notable result of this type of genius. As another
example, Gould (1980, p. 66) cites Darwin's theory of natural selection,
which he characterizes as "an extended analogy ... to the laissez-faire
economics of Adam Smith." On a different scale, it may also be that
understanding in everyday life is enhanced by the ability to build
bridges from one conceptual domain to another and that a major
aspect of this ability is a sensitivity to similar relationships in quite
different contexts.
How Can We Assess Understanding?
How can one be sure that someone else understands a concept? Perhaps
one cannot. For that matter, how can one be sure that one understands
a concept oneself? Again, perhaps one cannot. A fundamental limitation
on our ability to assess understanding stems from the difficulty we
encounter in trying to define the concept in a completely satisfactory
way.
On the one hand, we might insist that one cannot really understand
anything very deeply without understanding its relationships, and
especially its cause-effect relationships. If this is the case, one would
have to conclude that one cannot understand hearing without un-
derstanding the physics of sound, or biology without understanding
the chemistry of the living cell, or biochemistry without a knowledge
of molecular, atomic, and subatomic structures and processes. Could
one be said to understand physics in the absence of a theory of ep-
istemology and an appreciation of the roles of observation, perception,
and inference as determining our conceptions of the nature of things?
February 1985 229

On the other hand, this seems a bit extreme. Would we insist that
a computer programmer does not understand a program he has written
unless he understands how the high-level language code will be translated
into a binary code, how that code will be represented in the machine's
memory, and how the computer hardware will access, decode, and
execute the individual instructions? Would we not be willing to say
that a programmer understands his program if he can describe what
it does at the level of the symbols he has written and can predict the
consequences, again at a macroscopic level, of running it under specified
conditions or with specified inputs?
The problem of arriving at an adequate definition of understanding
remains a challenge, and until such a definition is developed, it will
be difficult to have a methodology for determining whether, or the
degree to which, understanding has been attained in any particular
instance. For practical purposes, however, we may be willing to finesse
the definitional problem and work on the assumption that the concept
is meaningful enough intuitively to permit us to accept various things
as evidences of understanding: the ability to communicate effectively
with people who are knowledgeable with respect to a given domain;
the ability to apply a principle consistently in a variety of contexts;
the ability to carry out a process or procedure in such a way as to
obtain consistently the desired results; the feeling or subjective con-
fidence that one understands ("sees")a principle or relationship (perhaps
not strong evidence but not unimportant either); the ability to draw
analogies that are considered appropriate by people who are presumed
to be knowledgeable with respect to the domain.
Perhaps the most important point is that if one deeply understands
a concept, principle, or process, that understanding should be de-
monstrable in a variety of ways. Conversely, to conclude that one
understands something well on the basis of a single test may, in general,
be a risky practice. Certainly, the fact that one can use a word appro-
priately in context does not demonstrate a very deep understanding
of the meaning(s) of the word; nor does the fact that physics students
use formulas and equations correctly to solve textbook problems con-
stitute good evidence that they understand the concepts involved in
more than a superficial way.
Conceptual Complexity
Determining whether, or the extent to which, one understands some-

thing undoubtedly increases in difficulty with the complexity of the
problem. Determining whether one understands a simple command
(close the door, put the book on the table, pass the butter) is relatively

Nickerson
straightforward. If one can follow such instructions correctly, we would

probably be willing to assume that one has understood them. Deter-
mining whether one understands Godel's incompleteness theorem-
really understands it-is a different matter altogether.
It seems clear that some concepts are intrinsically more complex
than others and more difficult to understand. Of course, sometimes
we fool ourselves in this regard in that what seems to be simple may
turn out to be quite complex on closer examination. Moreover, it is
also clear that what appears to be simple to one individual may appear
to be quite complex to another. But assuming that the idea of different
degrees of intrinsic conceptual complexity is a meaningful one, how
might we operationalize it?
An attempt to deal with conceptual complexity will not be made in
this paper, beyond noting that any adequate definition will probably
involve such notions as richness, connectedness, coupling-the general
idea being that the complexity of a concept is somehow dependent
on the number of other concepts that must be understood in order
for the concept in question to be understood (and on the complexity
of those concepts in turn). In other words, the suggestion is that the
complexity of a concept is a function of the amount of knowledge one
must have in order to understand that concept. A problem with this
idea, perhaps, is the Hegelian notion that in order to know all there
is to know about anything, one must know all there is to know about
everything, because everything is related to everything. This view is
not very helpful; indeed it denies the reality of different degrees of
complexity because, according to it, everything is equally (i.e., infinitely)
complex. But we may be willing to stop short of defining understanding
as knowing all there is to know about something.
One way to think of complexity is in terms of the breadth and depth
of a concept's connectedness. That is, a concept might be immediately
connected to many other concepts (which reflects its breadth of con-
nections) and deeply connected to some of them, in the sense that the
concepts to which it is connected are themselves complex and thus
connected to many others in turn. This view relates to the problem
of representing concepts as semantic networks, as they are sometimes
represented in computer programs in work on artificial intelligence.
The complexity of a concept in this case might be taken as the number
of nodes in the net in terms of which the concept is defined.
Understanding and Knowledge
A recurring theme in this discussion has been the importance of knowl-

edge in understanding. This is a theme that is encountered with in-
February 1985 231

creasing frequency in the literature of both cognitive psychology and

artificial intelligence. The relative newness of the theme, in at least
the latter case, is worth noting. When, in the middle of this century,
a few scientists began to think seriously about how machines might
be given the ability to do things that were considered evidence of
intelligence when done by humans, much emphasis was placed on
structures and processes that could learn. The machines that were
built, or conceptualized, typically were given the ability to learn to
discriminate among various inputs through a process of adaptation
and self-regulation in which the principle of negative feedback played
a central role. Little, if any, information or knowledge about the world
was programmed into these machines; the idea seemed to be that
given a sufficiently effective learning mechanism, a machine could
acquire the knowledge base it needed from its interactions with the
world.
Currently, the strategy that is typically followed in trying to develop
intelligent behavior in machines has a rather different focus. Now the
favored approach is to program a great deal of knowledge into the
machine at the outset. Major problems of this approach involve deciding
what knowledge a machine must have in order to perform a given
task and finding a way to represent that knowledge so it will be available
for effective use. One of the results of the considerable work done on
machine intelligence during the past few decades has been a discovery
of the very considerable amount of knowledge that is required for the
performance of even what may appear to be relatively straightforward
cognitive tasks. This discovery in the domain of machine intelligence
has also heightened our awareness of the fact that human performance
of cognitive tasks may depend on the use of a more extensive knowledge
base than may be apparent.
Brown, Collins, and Harris (1978) have proposed an account of
understanding that emphasizes the role of knowledge that the one
who understands brings to whatever it is that is to be understood.
Moreover, there are, they suggest, domain-independent strategies that
are useful, if not essential, to understanding new situations. Under-
standing, in their view, is less a state of mind than a process, and as
such it involves the active participation of the one who understands
in forming, testing, and revising hypotheses.
The understanding of something (a story, a mathematical equation,
an electronic circuit) requires that the one who understands proceed
beyond the "surface structure," which is provided by the situation, to
a "deep-structure trace,"which represents many aspects of the situation
that are not explicit in the surface representation. The goals of story
characters, the reasons for the specific steps in a mathematical proof,

Nickerson
the purpose of an electronic circuit, are examples of properties that

may not be explicit in a surface structure but that are essential to a
more than superficial understanding. A deep-structure trace must be
constructed by the understander, and its construction requires utilizing
various types of knowledge that the understander must bring to the
situation. In the absence of that knowledge, a correct understanding
of the situation cannot be developed.
To understand even a simple story, for example, one must make
use of a surprising amount of knowledge that is not contained explicitly
in the story: knowledge of what kinds of behavior are expected of
people in specific roles and specific situations; knowledge of people's
motivation, intentions, and purposes; knowledge of their affective
reactions to specific circumstances; knowledge of how the physical
world works; and so on. Tacit knowledge, similar to that used to
understand stories, must be applied to understand mathematical equa-
tions and electronic circuit diagrams. Part of what it means to understand
the solution of a mathematical equation is to be aware not only of the
legitimacy of the steps in the solution and the operations involved in
those steps, but also of the reasons why that particular sequence of
steps was chosen by the problem solver. Brown et al. (1978) see con-
ventional teaching's failure to stress the kind of knowledge that prescribes
the types of steps most appropriate to various equation-solving problems
as a basic cause of mathematical illiteracy.
Similarly, the key to understanding electronic circuits is a discovery
or realization of the circuit designer's plans, which are represented
only implicitly in the circuit realization. The discovery of such a plan,
through inspection of a circuit, requires a mix of bottom-up and top-
down, or inductive and deductive, inferencing. One obtains clues to
the designer's overall objectives by recognizing the existence of familiar
low-level structures (e.g., basic combinations of transistors, resistors,
and other components) that are typically used to perform specific low-
level functions. One simultaneously hypothesizes higher-level structures
and their functions, and these hypotheses, in turn, have implications
for other lower-level characteristics of the circuit. Understanding of
the circuit is considered to be complete when the top-level model is
consistent with the low-level components and accounts for all of them.
Although the three domains considered by Brown et al. (1978) differ
in many respects, and understanding in any one of them requires
certain domain-specific knowledge, the understanding process in all
three cases depends, to some extent, on domain-independent knowledge
that the understander brings to the situation. In particular, in all cases
the development of a "deep-structure trace" involves the generation
and testing of hypotheses regarding such things as motives, goals,
February 1985 233

plans, intentions, and purposes that cannot be generated in the absence

of preexisting knowledge or theories of why people do the things they
do in specific contexts. A deep-structure trace, when developed, con-
stitutes an explanation of, or reason for, the surface structure that is
represented by the thing to be understood.
The generalization that seems to emerge is the following one: the
more knowledge one has that is related to a concept (mechanism,
process, principle, relationship, or whatever), the greater one's un-
derstanding is likely to be. Conversely, the less one knows that is
relevant to a concept, the smaller the likelihood that one can understand
the concept in more than a superficial way. Stated in these terms, the
idea seems obvious. Is it not apparent that one cannot hope to un-
derstand the notion of quark flavor without knowing quite a lot about
theoretical physics; that one's understanding of a red giant is bound
to be incomplete if one has never heard of a white dwarf; that a more-
than-superficial understanding of nucleic acids will surely require a
knowledge of what amino acids are and how they are synthesized?
But if so much is obvious, there remains much that is not.
To insist that a thorough understanding of anything requires a
knowledge of everything to which it relates is to admit that a thorough
understanding of anything is humanly impossible. This may be an
acceptable conclusion from some points of view; however, it has little
practical significance. What we want to know is how to foster the kind
of understanding that, for practical purposes, may be considered ad-
equate, if not complete.
The idea that understanding requires an adequate knowledge base
is hardly a novel or suprising one. Numerous writers have suggested,
directly or indirectly, that depth of understanding is likely to scale
more or less directly with the richness of the knowledge base one has
in a particular area. This is not to suggest, however, that the best way
to increase one's understanding of something is to learn a large number
of facts by rote. Understanding is an active process. It requires the
connecting of facts, the relating of newly acquired information to what
is already known, the weaving of bits of knowledge into an integrated
and cohesive whole. In short, it requires not only having knowledge
but also doing something with it.
Finally, the dependence of understanding on knowledge reminds
us that all understanding is tenuous and, in a sense, transitory. We
are obliged to understand the world in terms of the concepts and
theories of our time. Galileo could not understand the world in terms
of Newtonian mechanics, and Newton could not understand it in terms
of the concepts of Einsteinian relativity. We cannot understand it in
terms of the physics of the twenty-first century; in light of the physics

Nickerson
of the future, our present understanding will certainly appear to be

deficient and incomplete. Understanding the world can never be any-
thing more than an understanding of models or theories about the
world that are current at the time.
Summary
Evidence is good that students often get through many years of formal
education without acquiring a sufficiently deep understanding of some
of the fundamental concepts they have studied; they are not able to
apply those concepts effectively in new contexts. Our ability to design
educational policies and procedures that will ensure understanding is
constrained by our limited knowledge of what it means to understand
and how to determine whether, or the extent to which, understanding
has been attained. The concept of understanding is a fundamental
one for education, however, and it deserves more attention than it
has received. In this essay I have made and tried to illustrate some
points about the concept, including the following:
Understanding is not an all-or-nothing affair; rather, it varies in

degree and is probably never complete.
One of the ways experts' understanding of domain-specific problems
differs from that of nonexperts is that the experts bring to a
problem a great deal of specific knowledge about the domain and
the problem-solving approaches that are appropriate to it.
Representations play an important role in understanding.
Experts differ from novices in their greater ability to generate

qualitative representations of problems and, in particular, rep-
resentations that require familiarity with concepts, principles, and
relationships that are not explicit in surface descriptions of the
problems.
Included in the representations that experts use effectively are
dynamic ones-process models-that permit the mental simulation
of the behavior of mechanisms or systems.
Facility in the use of analogies, especially interfield analogies, has

been considered a key to understanding in some instances.
The most compelling generalization that emerges from these ob-

servations is the importance of knowledge to understanding. The more
one knows about a subject, the better one understands it. The richer
February 1985 235

the conceptual context in which one can embed a new fact, the more
one can be said to understand the fact. An obvious objection to this
position is that it simply displaces our original problem by raising the
question of what it means to know, but there may be no way out of
this bind.
At root, understanding is a true paradox: the more one learns about
some aspect of the world, the more aware one is likely to become of
the depth of one's ignorance of it. That does not necessarily mean
that as a consequence of learning, one's understanding actually decreases,
but simply that one's appreciation of the complexity of that aspect of
the world is likely to increase-which may be, after all, a better un-
derstanding of a fundamental sort. Certainly, what it means to un-
derstand is itself much more complex than might at first appear. But
recognition of this fact may be a step in the direction of better un-
derstanding not only what it means to understand but also how to
promote understanding more effectively and how to determine the
extent to which understanding has been attained.
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Severalexperimentalstudies are reviewed, the results of which suggest

Examples of Misconceptions and Failures to Understand

Examples of failures to understand probably could be found in any

Apparently a significant percentage of college students, including those

February 1985 201

some relatively fundamental principles of projectile motion. In one

is senior vice president of BBN Laboratories

202 American Journal of Education

February 1985 203

with does nI led atIal toteetato

204 American Journal of Education

object set in motion acquires an impetus that tends to maintain that

There is evidence that many college students, including those majoring

February 1985 205

clear. One suggested possibility is that the representation of rate re-

Minstrell (1982b) described an effort to get high school physics students

206 American Journal of Education

February 1985 207

The primary-grade undifferentiated-binary operation frame: The

208 American Journal of Education

to add two numbers, addition is the only operation that is taught,

February 1985 209

in the case of A (B + C). The operation is not wrong; the trouble

An area of confusion in mathematics that deserves special mention

210 American Journal of Education

factoring, expanding) and applying the same operation to both sides

February 1985 211

Rosnick and Clement (1980) gave an incorrect equation to represent

212 American Journal of Education

In particular, one would like to know how much of this difficulty is a

February 1985 213

acquired early and developed well may prove to be extremely persistent,

These examples of misunderstanding supposedly familiar concepts,

214 American Journal of Education

a systematic attempt to identify the major kinds of conceptual difficulties

What Does It Mean to Understand?

What it means to understand is a disarmingly simple question to ask

February 1985 215

however, sometimes we are embarrassed to discover that something

In Haiti until recently the title of First Lady belonged to Simone

Hofstadter's point is that no matter how one defines the term-for

216 American Journal of Education

enough to encompass both would probably be too broad to do justice

The Nonbinary Nature of Understanding

It is clear that understanding can vary in degree or completeness. This

February 1985 217

StatementsIllustrating That Degree of UnderstandingIs Determinedin

Italy is farther south than Sweden.

A directrix of a ruled surface is a curve through which a line generating

The human eye contains many more rods than cones.

The child is father of the man.

The French revolution gave birth to the "Reign of Terror."

Fibrin arrays are structured so as to be as conducive to the breakdown

According to the cosmological principle, the large-scale structure of the

This statement is false.

If the statement "This statement is false" is true, it is false; whereas if it

A soft answer turns away wrath.

Normally water turns to ice when its temperature is lowered to 32 degrees

Rembrandt painted "The Night Watch," which currently is on display in

Matter in a black hole is infinitely compressed.

In Tokyo speed limits are strictlyenforced.