Familiarity
has a lot of influence on our prior knowledge before learning something; we
usually have more knowledge in fields we encounter on a regular basis. Often it
is hard for us to accept the fact that while some things come as a no brainer
for us, it might not like that for other people.
Want an example? When I was in
high school I nearly got into a fight with my friend because she won’t accept
the fact that people in some countries cannot go the beach because they do not
have one. She thought that every country must have beaches. Now for some of us, when
confronted with questions like this it might come as automatic to simply summon
a model of earth inside our mind and imagine the middle part of continents
which leads to identifying Mongolia, all those countries with –tan in Central
Asia, Zimbabwe, Sudan and such, Austria, Switzerland, etc. They are called landlocked countries, by the way. It just seems like such a basic idea that we
often get hopeless and even frustrated when people do not view it the same. But
some people really cannot wrap their heads around it – either because they understand
it differently or even never gave it a thought in a first place. This brings us
to misconception.
(well because I learn about this today and
this childhood memory somehow popped up into my mind)
LEARNING
FAILURES AND HOW IT HAPPENS
When knowledge is acquired,
concepts in regards to that knowledge as well as relationship between said
concepts are consequently changing. This process is called conceptual change and it happens continuously over the course of
our lifetime.
Some theories have arisen to
explain how conceptual change happens; most put a lot of emphasis on prior
knowledge since it is the foundation the future knowledge is built upon. One of
them is theory of conceptual change in learning physical world, by Vosniadou
(1994). She distinguished two kinds of prior knowledge; naïve framework theory and specific
theory. These are not concepts actually; they are more like structures the
concepts are embedded in. Framework
theory is believed to have been built in infancy, comprising entrenched
presuppositions about the epistemological and ontological nature of the reality
around us. Specific theory, in the
other hand, is kind of self-explanatory; it is more specific and explains the
nature of the conceptual domain within which the concepts are embedded. Hence
to put it simply, framework theory stores concepts that are fundamental and
serve as basic understanding of the world around us, while specific theory is
much more specific (you don’t say) and narrow.
Vosniadou (1994) also
differentiated two kinds of conceptual change; enrichment and revision.
Enrichment happens when we simply put the new knowledge on top of the old ones,
while revision occurs when we have to make adjustment, either to our
presuppositions or relationship between concepts, in order to fit our new
knowledge in. Both can happen at the level of specific theory or framework
theory. Enrichment usually does not
cause any major riot in someone’s mind, as well as revision at the level
specific theory. But if the revision happens at the level of framework theory,
shit just got real. It is considered the most difficult since it involve
changing someone’s fundamental understanding of the world, which is prone to misconception.
Misconception is one of the
failures of learning which happens when we fail to assimilate our knowledge to
our old ones. Truth to be told though, it is not the only form of learning
failures. There are two others, inconsistency
and inert knowledge (Vosniadou,
1994), although misconceptions turns out to be the most popular term.
Inconsistency happen when the
conflicting pieces of information are simply added up on top of the existing
knowledge. So even though a kid has learnt about earth rotation, for example,
when being asked about day/night cycle they still use their prior knowledge
which is “it goes behind the mountain”. Inert knowledge happens when someone
learns something that has nothing to do with their prior knowledge and the
information ends up not getting used. For example, you procrastinate until the
day before test and end up cramming everything to your head without trying to
make sense of everything. An hour after the test, you totally forgot everything
(I so can relate to this). Misconceptions, on the other hand, are triggered
when we try to reconcile the inconsistent piece of information, producing a
mental model that stands in the middle; it is not quite right yet, but it is
getting there.
One of the most common
misconceptions is the Earth, especially the shape. Constructing correct mental
model of earth is especially difficult for children because it violates the presuppositions
of the naïve framework theory within which the concept of earth is embedded
(Vosniadou & Brewer in Vosniadou, 1994). To be specific, children often
think of Earth as a physical object, rather than astronomical, and apply to it
all the prepositions that apply to physical objects in general. Two of these
presuppositions are 1) space is organized in terms of the directions of up and
down with respect to a flat ground, and 2) any unsupported objects fall to this
ground. During the conceptual change, information about earth which is
contradictory to these presuppositions is assimilated into the existing conceptual
structure creating misconceptions.
Below are some graphic
representations that depict children’s conceptual change regarding this topic,
done in various studies across the world (Vosniadou, 1994).
Children’s
earlies model of the Earth usually portrays it as a flat disc or rectangular
object with the sky, stars and the sun floating above it. This model is heavily
influenced by children’s own observation of the universe, which conceived in
the presuppositions explained above. This is their presuppositions; it is not a
misconception yet.
This is what happens when children try to reconcile
their deeply embedded presuppositions with the culturally accepted knowledge. The
dual earth portrays 2 ‘earth’; one is flat where they live and do stuff, the
other is up in the sky being round like other people said. This shows that the
children are not ready to give up their previous knowledge and instead forcing
the new ones at the end of it. The hollow sphere model commences when the
children give up their presumption that Earth needs to be supported, but have
not yet comprehend how people can walk on a ball and do not fall off the
surface. The flattened sphere model happens when the children have embraced the
concept of gravity, but still believe that the ground people walk on is flat. This
is the misconceptions.
This is the scientifically correct one.
Children have to go a long way before they arrive at this point; some go
through shorter journeys that others, other may will never be there.
POPULAR
OPINION = POPULAR MISCONCEPTION
The misconception of the shape of the earth is one of the most
popular misconceptions in children – others are day/night cycle and seasonal chnge.
I still don’t know how to categorize my friend though. We live in Indonesia, which
has the longest shoreline in the world (I think), hence beaches are usually perceived
as congenital. We got our first extensive geographical science in middle
school, if I’m not mistaken; we discussed countries, their distinctive
traits and drew maps, therefore the fact that some countries are located in the
middle of their respective continent and therefore do not have shoreline had to be exposed to her at some point. Maybe she failed to connect the knowledge she
learn to what she already know, which is a case of inconsistency, or maybe she
had some sort of weird mental model of earth that somehow allows every
countries to have beaches, which is a case of misconception. Either way, I’ll
never find out.
Aside from that,
misconceptions do happen a lot and this term is mostly assigned to an idea that
is wrong yet widely believed by people. In a non-scientific way, misconception
is defined to be ‘a view or opinion that is incorrect because based on faulty
thinking or understanding.’ They range from small, daily facts to great ones that
are strong enough to determine the storyline of the history. I think it is mostly
because scientific ideas are hard to apprehend, and sticking with prior
knowledge or constructing an alternative knowledge are much easier. Below is a
list I made of misconceptions which are either too popular or fatal, or simply surprising
to me.
- Tomatoes
are not fruit, they are vegetables, Cinderella never wore glass slippers, Napoleon
Bonaparte is not that short, and Marie Antoinette never said ‘Let them eat
cake.’
- The Great
Wall of China cannot be seen from the Moon; the air pollution can though. Shame
on you, China.
- Hindu
caste system. Oh God, this pisses me off so bad I cannot explain. I’ll have to write a separate post on this one.
- During the
Black Death, Europe was still engulfed in superstitiousness and believed that black
cats are the root of all evil, including the plague; therefore they had to be
destroyed. What they did not know is the plague is caused by pes bacteria,
which is carried by rat. The result? The population of rat exploded and the
world witnessed the most devastating pandemics in human history during when
Europe lost 30-60% of its total population. Whats with that, huh.
- The
Evolution Theory by Charles Darwin is not about monkeys turning into human –
this is the most common misconception about Darwin’s theory. Darwin never
actually said this, nor will any respectable biologist. This myth was actually
spread by religious zealots during the 19th century in order to try
and discredit Darwin and promote anti-evolutionism among the religious. Here,
try reading this.
- Homosexuality
is not a choice. First, I myself did not choose to like boys, so did other
straight people. Secondly, why would people choose to be homos?
- Humans
do not have 5 senses; we actually have 17.
- The
term third world country does not refer to a country that is poor or
underdeveloped. It is actually a term invented during WWII for countries that
were neither capitalist nor communist.
... and many more. Interesting, isn't it. So never, ever,
believe in something just because other people believe the same thing. Misconceptions
can kill, people.
Sources:
Vosniadou, S. 1994. "Capturing and Modeling the Process of Conceptual Change." Learning and
Instruction, Vol. 4, pp. 45-69. Great Britain: Elsevier Science.
