Mistakes, errors and misconceptions

Among its recommendations to improve secondary science, the Education Endowment Foundation suggests teachers boost their knowledge of and challenging of student’s misconceptions. Here, I want to add mistakes and errors.

In his research into mistakes and learning deficits, James McMillan lists a number of reasons why learners make mistakes, which range from carelessness to deep-rooted misconceptions. I have also used Keith Taber’s four reasons for mistakes (lack of knowledge, a missing connection, a misunderstanding, or a misconception) to help plan interventions.

Boost your assessment literacy

A teacher with good assessment literacy of mistakes, errors and misconceptions will have knowledge of the common problems for each part of the curriculum. They will be able to recognise when a learner makes a mistake, and challenge it; predict common issues and plan to pre-empt them; and continually reflect and improve on their knowledge of learner mistakes.

Once you have a mental map of a concept, you can start to add common mistakes, errors and misconceptions: I imagine these as potholes or trip hazards. Taking the displacement reaction between copper sulfate and magnesium for 11–14 year olds as an example; the common mistakes, errors and misconceptions include:

• the perception that the magnesium rusts (oxidises) when it changes colour.
• thinking that copper sulfate ‘disappears’.
• describing a colourless liquid as ‘white’.
• word equation errors, like misspelling of sulfate.
• misconceptions associated with conservation of mass.

Strategies for improvement

There are a number of ways you can boost your assessment literacy:

• Experience. The more you teach, the more you will recognise the common mistakes learners make. Additionally, there are always learners who come up with a new error, mistake or interpretation of something, and here teachers can intervene.
• Talk to other teachers. As professionals, teachers can pool their experience and share anecdotes of learner mistakes, errors and misconceptions through face-to-face conversations or on social media. Identifying the common mistakes, errors and misconceptions for a topic as described above helps to focus the conversation and share good practice.
• Internet research. Searching online for ‘misconceptions + [topic]’ will give you a range of sources, such as teacher blogs, research digests and teacher websites to find out common issues with learning particular chemistry topics and concepts.
• Read the research literature. Google Scholar or a research database will reveal the most up-to-date research studies and reviews from around the world. Not all resources are free to access, but often a version of a paper is available online. Be aware that not all misconceptions are universal, some are culturally linked.

The next article in the series will look at your interpretation and intervention skills.