Learning from Erroneous Examples in the Physics Classroom: Do Students with Different Naïve Ideas Benefit Equally?

Rafi Safadi

Research suggests that troubleshooting activities that require students to reflect on teacher-crafted erroneous examples; i.e., erroneous solutions to problems that correspond to commonplace naïve ideas, are beneficial for learning. One possible explanation for these beneficial effects is that troubleshooting activities encourage students to test the quality of their own naïve ideas, not only the ones driving the erroneous examples, thereby improving learning. In a previous study, the author provided evidence confirming this explanation in 9th grade classes after finishing a unit on exponents. The previous study, however, addressed naïve ideas that corresponded to flaws in students’ procedural knowledge of exponents. Procedural knowledge is defined as knowledge of steps, or actions, to accomplish a goal. These naïve ideas are more like buggy errors, which are easier to change. Hence, it remains unclear whether the same pattern of results would hold equally well if the naïve ideas corresponded to flaws in students’ conceptual knowledge which are persistent and harder to change. Conceptual knowledge is defined as knowledge of concepts, which are abstract and general principles. This presentation describes an experimental field study that revealed the same pattern of results in five 8th grade classes (126 students) after finishing a unit on simple electric circuits, where the naïve ideas corresponded to deeply-held conceptual difficulties on this topic. The presentation accounts for the emergent results, discusses their implications, and suggests possible directions for future research.