Getting Inside Students’ Minds: Why Misconceptions Are So Powerful

“Students are not empty vessels,” he says. “Students are full of all kinds of knowledge, and they have explanations for everything.” From birth, human beings are working hard to figure out the world around us. But we go about it more like the early Greek philosophers than modern scientists: reasoning from our limited experience.

“Students are not empty vessels,” he says. “Students are full of all kinds of knowledge, and they have explanations for everything.”

From birth, human beings are working hard to figure out the world around us.But we go about it more like the early Greek philosophers than modern scientists: reasoning from our limited experience. And like those early philosophers — Ptolemy comes to mind — we’re often dead wrong.

Sadler says that cognitive science tells us that if you don’t understand the flaws in students’ reasoning, you’re not going to be able to dislodge their misconceptions and replace them with the correct concepts.

“It’s very expensive in terms of mental effort to change the ideas that you come up with yourself,” Sadler says. “It’s a big investment to say, ‘I’m going to abandon this thing that I came up with that makes sense to me and believe what the book or the teacher says instead.’ ”