Panel #3 - California State University, Northridge



Miha Lee

Professor Rivas

SED 600

14 March 2007

Awareness of prior knowledge is the most significant factor in helping a science teacher be successful.

INTRODUCTION

Massive general ‘transfer’ can be achieved by appropriate learning, and effective teaching practices are based on the profound learning theories. As a teacher we need to take our position regarding views on the learning theory. By and large, there are two views on the learning process in the educational community: passive and active.

The view on learning as a passive process originates from Positivism (Johnson, 2005), a philosophy states that knowledge exists outside of the individual. From this perspective, learning is the process of receiving information from outside of the individual. The purpose of schools is to supply students with a designated body of knowledge and skills in a predetermined order. Teaching is a matter of transmitting knowledge from point A (teacher’s head) to point B (students’ heads). (Johnson, 2005) Thus, learners don’t need to play an active role to make connection between new information and their prior knowledge in the learning process, and in turn teachers don’t need to consider their students’ cognitive structure. In sum, passive learning is the process of accumulation of new knowledge in learner’s mind.

In contrast, active learning is base on constructivism (Johnson, 2005), from which knowledge is seen as a subjective entity constructed by individual as he/she interacts with the objective environment. From this perspective, learning is an inner activity that uses both objective and subjective knowledge to constantly build and revise our cognitive structures. The purpose of schools is to help students construct knowledge and develop the skills they need to live in their worlds successfully. Teaching is a matter of creating conditions whereby students are able to transact with knowledge. (Johnson, 2005) Thus, learners need to play an active role to make connection between new information and their prior knowledge in their learning process. In short, active learning is the process of integration new knowledge into cognitive structure.

The importance of prior knowledge for subsequent learning has been recognized by these constructivists. According to them, learners build meanings on the basis of what they have in their minds. (Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer & Scott, 1994) From this perspective on learning, in order to predict how learners will respond to attempts to teach science, it is necessary to understand their prior knowledge, the knowledge that students bring to a given teaching situation. (Leach & Scott, 2003) Students come to science classrooms with a range of strongly held personal science views. So, to prepare their instructions teachers should have insights about students' prior knowledge, which are information about students' characteristic ways of thinking and talking about the world. Student performance improves when instructions are designed to deal with specific difficulties revealed in studies of students' prior knowledge. (Savinainen & Scott, 2002) Therefore, neglect of prior knowledge can result in students learning that is something opposed to the teacher's intentions, no matter how well those intentions are executed in his/her teaching practices. (Roschelle, 1995)

Especially, learning science is referred to ‘conceptual change’ based on prior knowledge in learner’s cognitive scheme or conceptual structure (von Glasersfeld, 1999, Roschelle, 1995) Therefore, in order to teach science successfully in classroom, teachers should be aware of what students’ prior knowledge is, how it affects science learning, and how they make the best use of it in their teaching practices.

Prior knowledge appears to be simultaneously necessary and problematic. The role of prior knowledge in science learning can be considered as both foundation for learning and barrier to understanding. (Fisher, 2004) And the definition of prior knowledge varies with the perspectives on its role. A typology developed by Taber (2001) offers a helpful tool to analyze the role of prior knowledge and address the learning impediments in science education.

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AS FOUNDATION FOR LEARNING

Why can Prior Knowledge be seen as Foundation for Learning?

According to cognitive learning theory, students build new knowledge based on their prior knowledge. Prior knowledge provides an anchor to assimilate new knowledge into cognitive structure (schemata). The notion of ‘cognitive structure’ can be defined as ‘the facts, concepts, propositions, theories, and raw perceptual data that the learner has available to her at any point in time, and the manner in which it is arranged’ (Taber, 2001, White, 1985, and Ausubel & Robinson, 1971).

Piaget’s believed that learning was a change in the cognitive structure through the processes of adaptation: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation involves the interpretation of new events in terms of existing cognitive structure. () Assimilation increases knowledge while preserving cognitive structure, by integrating information into existing schemata; accommodation modify cognitive structure to account for new experience. For Piaget, learning as a process of adaptation does not replace prior knowledge, but rather differentiates and integrates prior knowledge into a more coherent whole. (Roschelle, 1995)

Further, the importance of the prior knowledge as a foundation for learning was emphasized explicitly by Ausubel (1961). He pointed out that for ‘meaningful learning’ to occur, the learner had to recognize that what was being taught had some connection with exiting knowledge. Therefore, a paramount factor in any meaningful learning is what has previously been learned. In order for meaningful learning to take place, it is necessary both for the learner to hold some relevant prior knowledge, and for the teacher to ‘make the connection’ to help the learner recognize its relevance. If either of these conditions is not met, then rote learning instead of meaningful learning will take place. (Taber, 2001, Ausubel & Robison, 1971) In order to overcome this problem, Ausubel(1960) suggested the "advanced organizer" approach that urged teachers to use suitable organizing ideas in the introductory stages of new learning.

Likewise, many cognitive learning theorists emphasize the positive links between what has been learned and what is to be learned. They argued that because knowledge has logical and psychological links, the possibility of sequential and vertical transfer of learning would be enhanced by suitable arrangements and presentations. (Fensham, 1972) This means that without prior knowledge learning cannot occur or at least takes a lot of time to make some connection between existing cognitive structure and new information. For example, the adult who is unfamiliar with the possibilities of decentralized systems can't quickly be convinced that schooling fish have no leader. (Resnick, 1992) And there is no way to give the first-time jazz listener the enjoyment available to more practiced ears. (Roschelle, 1995) In short, prior knowledge determines what we learn from experience.

How does the idea of prior knowledge as foundation for learning affect our science teaching?

In science, the degree of sequential dependence of the content is so great that the role of prior knowledge is considered as a starting point for subsequent learning. Gagne (1968) and White (1972) argued that some of the sequences were so definite that without mastery of a prior step there could be no further progress in the subsequent ones. Such a hierarchy of learning steps in a subject is then a useful guide for the arrangement of the new material and also for developing checks to see just where learning is breaking down. (Fensham, 1972)

Bruner (1960) also believed that prior knowledge was the foundation for subsequent learning, thus a curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner so that the student continually builds upon what they have already learned. He argued that the spiral curriculum helped the students to master knowledge by revisiting the same basic ideas of the knowledge repeatedly in different ways of learning depending on his/her readiness for learning. (Smith, 2002)

In our educational settings, current curriculum reflects those ideas. As a result, the curriculum is organized in a simple-to-complex, general-to-detailed, concrete-to-abstract manner so that students repeatedly learn the key concepts of science in a course as they move up from the lower grades to higher grades in schools. This helps students master certain prerequisite knowledge and skills. This prerequisite sequencing provides linkages between each lesson as student spirals upwards in a course of a study. As new knowledge and skills are introduced in subsequent lessons, they reinforce what is already learned and become related to previously learned information. What the student gradually achieves is a rich breadth and depth of information that is not normally developed in curricula where each topic is discrete and disconnected from each other.

And some subjects (or courses) require taking prerequisite courses. For example, to take AP chemistry course, students must take introductory chemistry course and get enough grades to meet the condition. Entering college engineering courses asks for taking a variety of math and science courses, too.

In this sense, prior knowledge can be defined as the preinstructional knowledge that students have learned form the previous lessons. That is, prior knowledge is the foundation for subsequent learning that should be mastered before new information is to be taught. The teaching sequence should be designed on the basis of a detailed conceptual analysis of the science to be taught and students' typical preinstructional knowledge. Through this analysis, curricular goals can be identified and teaching activities designed and evaluated. (Leach & Scott, 2003)

This definition suggests two ways for teachers to use of the prior knowledge: “Readiness” and “Diagnostic” types of tests. (Fensham, 1972) Before instructions begin, using the former, the prior knowledge that is assumed by the new material should be checked to find out the readiness of students to learn. And then which students need extra attention to reach the common starting point with others should be informed to the teacher. After a period of new learning has occurred, the latter are used to determine the success of learning by comparing the achieved knowledge to the prior knowledge.

What are the problems with regard to prior knowledge as foundation for learning?

Taber (2001) developed a typology to analyze the learning impediments in terms of prior knowledge. In her research, if students don’t have appropriate prior knowledge, intended learning cannot take place. This kind of learning impediments is labeled a ‘null learning impediments’. This ‘null’ means that students don’t have or at least don’t seem to have prior knowledge that is assumed to be what they have learned from the prior instructions and where they start to build new knowledge. There are two possibilities for the apparent absence of relevant prerequisite knowledge.

One is a ‘deficiency learning impediment’ as the cause of the learning failure is a deficiency in the match between existing cognitive structure and the necessary prerequisite knowledge. The deficiency learning impediment comes from a previous failure of teaching or a misjudgment by the teacher. The teacher can make wrong judgment in evaluating the prior knowledge necessary for the new teaching, or in assuming the likely level of prior knowledge in the class. For example, at first I didn’t understand why my 10th grade students had difficulties understanding the exact meaning of the pH scale. I found later that they had not learned the logarithm in their mass courses unlike to me who learned the logarithm in 8th grade. In the case of deficiency learning impediment, the prerequisite learning needs to be put in place before the new material can be understood. Careful conceptual analysis of the material, and pre-testing of pupils’ prior knowledge avoid this type of learning impediment. (Taber, 2001)

The other is a ‘fragmentation learning impediment’, which is caused not by the absence of relevant prior knowledge, but by disconnection between existing prior knowledge and the presented material. In my chemistry class, without my help students didn’t make connection between periodic phenomena in the periodic table (new knowledge) and the electrostatic force between two charged particles (existing prior knowledge) directly. Therefore, to cure the fragmentation learning impediment, the teacher need to activate prior knowledge by providing ways to help the learner access, and make connections with, their existing ideas. Those ways may involve including a wider range of examples from more familiar situations and finding similarities between disparate topics. (Taber, 2001, Christen, Murphy, 1991)

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AS BARRIERS TO UNDERSTANDING

Why can Prior Knowledge be seen as Barriers to Understanding?

Studies of students' prior knowledge in science began in the 1970s. At that time the possibility that prior knowledge had a negative effect on subsequent learning was proposed with the careful documentation of common errors made by students in science. Why may a competent teacher, motivated students and effective learning environment fail to bring about desired learning? This is because Ausubel’s principle—that meaningful learning can take place if the presented material can be related to relevant ideas in cognitive structure—does not specify that the learner’s prior knowledge has to be accurate. (Fensham, 1972)

Research in science education has shown that intended learning is often compromised when there are ideas in a student’s cognitive structure that are recognized by learners as related to the new material. (Taber, 2001) For example, Fensham (1972) reported the reasons for the difficulties in learning the thermodynamic second law in high school chemistry. In his research, the students were asked for providing answers to the question of “why some mixture of chemicals react and some do not.” Some of the responses were misconceptions: chemical reactions always give out heat; chemical reactions occur if a gas or precipitate can form. Others were correct but irrelevant ideas to the way the new learning topic was usually presented.

Likewise, if a learner holds frameworks of understanding that are at odds with accepted knowledge, these alternative frameworks may act as suitable anchors for new knowledge and lead to the unintended learning.

What are the problems with regard to prior knowledge as Barriers to Understanding?

Prior knowledge can render incoming ideas nonsensical. Research has found that it is very common for learners to enter science classrooms already holding ideas relevant to the topic being taught, but at odds with the accepted curriculum knowledge. (Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer, & Scott, 1994) Where do the ideas come from? They are from not only the previous teaching but also from their intuitive ideas that everyday life experiences give to the learners. Those intuitive ideas are unique ways of making sense of their experiences in daily life.

These alternative conceptions seem to be persistent and hard to be erased. (Fisher, 2004, Taber, 2001) For example, the majority of students who study photosynthesis fail to understand that carbon derived from carbon dioxide in the air is used by plants to construct themselves, first by incorporating the carbon into sugars and then incorporating the sugars into cellulose. In the Harvard/Smithsonian Minds of Our Own video series (Schnepps, 1997), an interviewer shows fourth graders first a seed and then a dry log from a tree. “Where does the weight of the tree come from?” she asks. The fourth graders say, “the sun, the soil, rain, nutrients.” The interviewer presents the same question to students graduating from MIT and Harvard and gets the same answers from most of them. Every student has had high school biology. Some have studied biology in college. Some have even majored in biology. It is likely that they have all memorized the formula for photosynthesis in which carbon dioxide goes in and sugar comes out. But their answers are similar to those provided by fourth graders. (Fisher, 2004)

This episode is the typical example of ‘ontological’ learning impediment categorized by Taber (2001). Ontological learning impediments are caused by the presence of inappropriate prior knowledge, and seem to be more problematic as it is more difficult to overcome than null learning impediments. This kind of wrong prior knowledge is called alternative conception or misconception. The students in the episode have believed that air has no weight from their everyday experiences. How can you take a substance from this weightless, invisible air and create something as massive and heavy as a tree? It does not make sense. What is more, it should be noted that the misconception is not directly connected to photosynthesis. It focuses on the nature of air. These distant misconceptions are the most difficult to discover and to change. Further, a deep-seated misconception about the nature of air interferes with the learning of many things such as the conservation of mass (physics, chemistry), change of states (physics, chemistry) and so on. (Fisher, 2004)

Another type of learning impediment caused by the presence of prior knowledge is called ‘pedagogic’. Pedagogical learning impediments come from the prior teaching. To teach difficult or complicate concepts, teachers often use analogies and oversimplication. These methods cause students to misunderstand the science concepts. Consider the octet framework. Chemical reactions can be understood in terms of electrical interactions between the molecules of the reacting substances. However, this is usually considered too difficult to teach at an introductory level, and often is taught by using the octet framework. Even some teachers explain that electrons ‘want’ to have filled electron shells ‘to be happy’ and this wanting cause chemical reactions. Unfortunately, much of the chemistry they are expected to learn on more advanced courses is inconsistent with this ‘octet framework’, and effective learning is inhibited. (Taber, 2001)

How can teachers solve the problems with regard to prior knowledge as barriers to understanding?

The influence of the constructivist view in science education has been to encourage teachers to elicit their pupils’ ideas about a concept area at the start of the topic (Driver & Oldham, 1986) and to plan to reconstruct those ideas. The teacher can try and explicitly challenge students’ alternative ideas by focusing on phenomena that are difficult to explain in students’ existing schemes, and by exploring any logical faults or limitations that can be overcome by adopting the scientific view. (Taber, 2001)

Piaget suggested that when doing a task provokes conflict between accommodation and assimilation, and supports for equilibration between these, conceptual change successfully occurs. According to Rochelle (1995) in general, learning involves three different scales of changes. Most commonly, learners assimilate additional experience to their current theories and practices. However, somewhat less frequently, an experience causes a small cognitive shock that leads the learner to put ideas together differently. Much more rarely, learners undertake major transformations of thought that affect everything from fundamental assumptions to their ways of seeing, conceiving, and talking about their experience. While rare, this third kind of change is most profound and highly valued.

Vygotsky’s idea of "Zone of Promixal Development (ZPD)" (Wertsch, 1985; Newman, Griffith, & Cole, 1989) advises that teachers provide "scaffolding" to enable learners to construct new knowledge based on their prior knowledge. Vygotsky saw knowledge coming from culture and gradually expanding into individual’s cognitive structure through social interaction in the ZPD. By scaffolding, modeling, and negotiating, experienced adults are able to guide learning so as to bring the learner into a specialized cultural community. (Roschelle, 1995)

Analyzing conceptual change, Toulmin (1972) argued that conceptual change was not the mere replacement of one theory by another. Conceptual change occurs slowly, and involves a complex restructuring of prior knowledge to encompass new ideas, findings, and requirements.

Therefore, some measures can be taken to successfully reconstruct students’ alternative conceptions. First, science teaching should provide more concrete learning experiences, which are related to familiar situations and interactive, in order to support conceptual change. Most conventional physics courses, for example, focus on manipulating mathematical expressions that refer to idealized situations, i.e. a frictionless plane. Teachers should not expect such an abstract experiences to facilitate much change in familiar concepts of motion. Second, teachers should try to refine teaching material not to cause misunderstanding. For example, many "misconceptions" are correct elements of knowledge that have been over generalized. By specifying a narrower range of situations, the concepts become "correct." (Roschelle, 1995)

How can teachers investigate students’ prior knowledge?

By tapping their students' prior knowledge in concerned subject areas, teachers can plan lessons that will: clarify incomplete or erroneous prior knowledge, determine the extent of instruction necessary in a particular topic area, and discern necessary adjustments to planned independent activities and assessment materials. (Kujawa and Huske, 1995) Besides, once students are asked to elicit their ideas about science phenomena, they have an opportunity to articulate and clarify their ideas and to be motivated to find the correct science views. Providing tools, activities and learning environments for representing prior knowledge can enable learners to reflect more systematically on prior knowledge. (Roschelle, 1995)

First of all, pretest can be used for tapping students’ prior knowledge. However, the test should ask students to express their understanding, not factual knowledge and the ability of mathematical calculations. The questions that require students to make a prediction and give a qualitative explanation, uncover their prior knowledge.

Second, concept mapping and graphic organizer have proved themselves an effective tool to uncover prior knowledge. (Fisher, 2004, Roschelle, 1995) Such visualizations help learners think about their thinking. Students can use "semantic networks" to map the associations among ideas before, during and after learning. Fisher (2004) reported that his computer program named Semantica was a useful tool for capturing a learner’s prior knowledge. For students to effectively express their prior knowledge in Semantica, three conditions must be met. First, students must be generating knowledge from their heads, without reference to texts or other instructional materials. Second, they must feel free to express their thoughts, knowing they will not be graded with respect to scientific correctness. Third, they must be sufficiently familiar with the software so as to be able to express their knowledge effectively. Under these conditions, students are willing to include personal as well as objective knowledge.

A clinical interview (Posner & Gertzog, 1982; White, 1985) also can be used as a tool to probe a learner’s prior knowledge. The interview usually involves a task in which the learner manipulates some physical materials. Good tasks are simple and focus tightly on the concept at stake. Thus, a strange set of actions in the task readily indicates a different sensibility. The interviewer then probes the learner's understanding by asking questions about things the learner has said or done and avoiding leading questions. As the interview progresses, it is often helpful to ask the learner to consider alternatives to see how stable a particular concept is. A transcript of the resulting interview provides a great deal of detail about prior knowledge. (Roschelle, 1995)

Researchers in information processing theory have developed the technique of the think-aloud protocol (Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Simon & Kaplan, 1989), which collects information about a learner's problem solving process. The learner is trained to "think aloud" while they perform on a simple task, like addition. Thinking aloud means simply verbalizing the stream of consciousness, and not explaining or justifying actions to the interviewer. The interviewer does not ask questions, but merely prompts the learner to "say what you are thinking" whenever the learner stops talking. Then the learner is given the target problem-solving task, and recorded on audiotape. The resulting "protocol" can then be analyzed for evidence of the prior knowledge and differences in thinking processes (Robertson, 1990).

To probe students’ prior knowledge, inquiry-based learning and POE strategy can be used. In the inquiry-based learning students are supposed to make a hypothesis before exploring the world. To create a hypothesis, students need to clarify their prior knowledge putting their ideas in words. Likewise, in a POE task students should make predictions about the result of a demonstration. To make a prediction, students need to articulate their previous ideas to express their ideas verbally.

NOVICE AND EXPERT TEACHERS’ CONCEPTIONS OF LEARNERS’ PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Meyer (2004) reported a comparative case study of novice and expert teachers that provided insights into how novice and expert teachers understand the concept of prior knowledge and how they use this knowledge to make instructional decisions.

In this study, two novice teachers, who were preservice and first year teachers, believed that the source of learners’ prior knowledge was prior teaching that students had learned by that grade in school. As a result, they asked their students to recall previous instructions as the sole connection to what they were going to cover, but didn’t ask their students to explain the relationship of the new material to what was previously learned or even what students remembered or understood from the previous instructions.

In contrast, two expert teachers, who had more than 10 years teaching experience in urban schools, regarded the main source of prior knowledge as not only prior instructions but also everyday life experiences that students had observed and had partial explanations for. These beliefs led expert teachers to ask their students to relate examples, to tie ideas together, or to explain real life situations based on previous instructions before going on to new materials.

In addition, novice teachers hold a very limited view of the importance of prior knowledge for learning. For example, they mostly used their students’ prior knowledge for engagement starters. They saw prior knowledge as the information base upon which new information could be added. They considered prior knowledge as a building foundation for subsequent learning onto which new material could be built.

On the other hand, expert teachers spoke of prior knowledge as a bridge to understanding and integrating new information to create better or new explanations. They believed that drawing on students’ prior knowledge provided the way to make connections from one concept or idea to another, or from informal experience to a scientific concept.

In sum, novice teachers hold insufficient conceptions of prior knowledge and its role in instruction to effectively implement teaching practices. While expert teachers hold a complex conception of prior knowledge and make use of their students’ prior knowledge in significant ways during instruction.

EXTENDED MEANING OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Prior knowledge exists not only at the level of "concepts," but also at the levels of perception, focus of attention, procedural skills, modes of reasoning, and beliefs about knowledge. (Roschelle, 1995) Trowbridge and McDermott (1980) studied perception of motion. Students perceive equal speed at the moment when two objects pass, whereas scientists observe a faster object passing a slower one. Anzai and Yokohama (1984), Larkin (1983), and Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser (1980) studied how students perceive physics problems and found they often notice superficial physical features, such as the presence of a rope, whereas scientists perceive theoretically-relevant features, such as the presence of a pivot point. Larkin, McDermott, Simon and Simon (1980) studied students' solutions to standard physics problems and found that students often reason backwards from the goal towards the known facts, whereas scientists often proceed forward from the given facts to the desired unknown. Similarly, Kuhn (Kuhn, Amsel, & O'Loughlin, 1988) studied children's reasoning at many ages and found that children only slowly develop the capability to coordinate evidence and theory in the way scientists do. Finally, Songer (1988) and Hammer (1991) studied students’ beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge. They found that students sometimes have beliefs that foster attitudes antagonist to science learning.

In summary, prior knowledge comes in diverse forms. It affects how students interpret instruction. While it may not prevent them from carrying out procedures correctly, it frequently leads to unconventional and unacceptable explanations. Prior knowledge is active at levels ranging from perception to conception to beliefs about learning itself. Moreover, its effects are widespread through lay and professional population, from young children through to adults, and from low to high ability students.

CONCLUSION

Research on the effects of prior knowledge requires a change from the view that learning is absorption of transmitted knowledge, to the view that learning is construction of meaning, specifically conceptual change in science education (Resnick, 1983; Champagne, Gunstone, & Klopfer, 1985). Conceptual change is a process of transition from ordinary ways of perceiving, directing attention, conceptualizing, reasoning, and justifying to scientific ways. Especially, in secondary science education in which students have developed their prior knowledge about the world’s phenomena from the prior education and their life experiences, learning process is perceived as a reconstruction of prior knowledge.

Surely, for effective learning to occur, many conditions should be met. Teacher need to be enthusiastic, knowledgeable in his/her subject specialty, and has effective pedagogical skills; students have to be motivated to learn, be provided with an appropriate curriculum and a suitable learning environment. However, although those conditions are met, intended learning could fail to occur without proper matching between the assumed prerequisite knowledge for a teaching episode and students’ actual conceptual structures. Therefore, awareness of the effect and use of prior knowledge in the teaching-learning process is the most significant pedagogic skill for successful science teachers to have.

In the learning process, prior knowledge plays both positive and negative role in science education, but in any way its role is a crucial factor that must be understood by teachers for meaningful learning to occur. Roschelle (1995) maintained that prior knowledge be properly understood not as causes of errors or success, but rather as the raw material that conditions all learning. It is part of teaching skill to know which are the positive elements and which are negative elements for intended learning to take place. In brief, learners can succeed in conceptual change as long as appropriate care is taken by teachers in acknowledging students ideas, embedding them in an appropriate socially discourse, and providing ample support for the cognitive struggles that will occur.

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