Where does misconception collide?

In science education, this construct is the self-consistent idea a learner already holds about a phenomenon that departs from the scientifically accepted account, such as believing heavier objects fall faster. Driver and Easley's 1978 Pupils and paradigms argued these ideas are coherent frameworks worth taking seriously, and deliberately preferred the neutral term 'alternative framework' over the deficit-laden 'misconception.' The referent is a learner's stable prior idea in tension with canonical science, probed by interviews and diagnostic items, and the many labels for it name the very same thing with different connotations.[1]

Unit

A learner's stable idea that conflicts with the accepted account

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Elicited through clinical interviews, concept inventories, and diagnostic items that reveal the learner's own reasoning

In conceptual-change research the same entity is often called a preconception or prior conception: the existing belief a learner must restructure, not merely add to, in order to accommodate a new scientific concept. Posner and colleagues' 1982 Accommodation of a scientific conception set out the conditions under which a learner abandons one conception for another, treating the prior conception as the thing that resists and must give way. It is the identical construct science educators elsewhere call a misconception or alternative conception, framed by its role in change rather than its wrongness, so the differing names are a jangle.[2]

Unit

The prior conception that resists and must be restructured

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Inferred from pre- and post-instruction reasoning and from whether a learner meets the conditions for accommodating the new concept