Motivation
To review two decades of research on refutation text research in science education to determine factors that make them more or less effective.
Refutation Texts
Refutation texts are a direct-instruction approach to addressing misconceptions. They are popular in science education because, as people interact with the physical world, they develop misconceptions about how it works. When they are faced with facts that contradict this prior knowledge, they can take one of three paths according to Posner et al.’s (1982) model of conceptual change:
- The least useful path: ignore the new information because it doesn’t fit in existing knowledge structures, and thus, doesn’t make sense (this is not an entirely voluntary process)
- The most common path: develop a separate knowledge structure disconnected from the existing knowledge structure for the new information (and perhaps not realize that they are in conflict)
- The most useful but least common path: reorganize existing knowledge structures to incorporate new information (i.e., conceptual change)
Achieving conceptual change is hard work, and that’s why misconceptions are so difficult to remedy. The need to reorganize prior knowledge structures is why direct-instruction approaches, which are inherently not responsive to individual students’ prior knowledge, are often not productive. For an example, see my article summary on erroneous examples. However, refutation texts have consistently been more effective at addressing misconceptions in science education compared to expository texts, which give correct explanations only. This paper discusses how.
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