I’ve recently been looking into scientific misconceptions and by what processes they are acquired (e.g. “heavy things fall faster than light things”). I came across Nick Rose’s excellent blog on the topic which I highly recommend. He references Geary’s theory of Educational Evolutionary Psychology, which I was already familiar from David Didau’s blogs on the topic as well as the chapter in Didau & Rose’s book on the topic.
Anyway, I decided to read some of the original work by David Geary as well as an short commentary by John Sweller (links below). I’ve really only dipped my toes into this and have a bit more to do in terms of science misconceptions particularly (which I will hopefully write about soon).
We have a research reading group at school and I’ve summarised my notes into a short powerpoint with some key quotes and diagrams. You’re more than welcome to have a look and feedback/further reading is always welcome.
Evolutionary Educational Psychology
Links to reading:
Principles of evolutionary educational psychology, D. C. Geary
Instructional Implications of David C. Geary’s Evolutionary Educational Psychology, J. Sweller
UPDATE 15/06/17
I found this article, also by Sweller, which looks more detailed than the one I initially looked at. I haven’t had time to process it fully yet.
UPDATE 18/07/17
Here is some more reading from Sweller. We had a legendary thread on twitter featuring a lot of knowledgeable folks (and myself) which can be checked out here.
A Chemical Orthodoxy 
June 12, 2017 at 4:54 pm
How does a reading group work?
LikeLike
June 12, 2017 at 4:55 pm
We pick a topic. I send some reading. We sit around and discuss it
LikeLike
June 12, 2017 at 5:25 pm
Thanks for this — I had only seen slivers of Geary before, and didn’t know that his ideas could be used to think about misconceptions. Very interesting!
I don’t really get where Sweller takes the primary/secondary knowledge distinction. It all seems post-hoc, which is something that Sweller typically makes a big deal of avoiding.
In particular, what can be gained by applying this distinction to problem solving skills? I don’t know the literature on problem solving skills in any particular depth, but I take it that it has been very hard to show benefits from working on domain-general problem solving skills. OK. So Sweller says that this shows that problem solving skills are biologically primary. OK. And this is why we can’t teach problem solving skills — because they’re biologically primary.
Wait. Isn’t that circular reasoning?
LikeLike
June 12, 2017 at 5:29 pm
I’m not sure that’s exactly what he’s saying. In the article he says that we don’t work at bio prim knowledge in the same way we work at bio sec. Can you get hold of the full article?
LikeLike
June 12, 2017 at 5:43 pm
I got my hands on it and you’re right — he doesn’t say anything about that in this piece.
Sweller also talks about Geary in this piece: http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/2025
Do you see the part that I was seeing about problem solving in this other article? He seems to be saying, I think, that problem solving can’t be taught because it’s biologically primary knowledge (I think).
LikeLike
June 12, 2017 at 6:05 pm
Ye maybe. That’s definitely the approach Didau takes in his blogs
LikeLike
June 12, 2017 at 7:39 pm
Yeah, I’ve seen it from David too. I’m not sure about teaching problem solving strategies (I really liked this for math) but I don’t understand how the biologically primary/secondary frame helps explain anything in a non-circular way.
I’ve read a bit about misconceptions in an attempt to understand my mathmistakes.org project.
One of the things that interests me the most is whether misconceptions should be directly confronted or not. There are two readings here that I’ve really enjoyed. The first I learned of through Greg Ashman’s blog:
https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/constructivism-dealt-a-blow/
The second is written from a constructivist perspective, it’s really long, but it’s also really, really interesting, titled Misconceptions Reconceived:
https://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Files/Courses_Folder/ED 261 Papers/Misconceptions reconceived.pdf
On my read, both the experimental and constructivist-theoretical perspectives of these two pieces converge on a similar insight: it isn’t necessarily a good idea to center instruction on exposing and confronting misconceptions, rather than positively working to build true knowledge and accurate conceptions.
Thinking about this has changed how I think about feedback and marking around mistakes and misconceptions. These days I’m less likely to dive into an explanation for why the mistake is a mistake and more likely to start edging them towards the truth.
As is often the case, knowledge helps! And it’s hard to reject a misconception without that knowledge.
Anyway, rant over. Looking forward to seeing where you take things from here!
LikeLiked by 1 person
June 12, 2017 at 7:53 pm
Great comment thanks a lot. Much to think about!
LikeLike