Course description
Conceptual Change: How New Ideas Take Root
This online workshop: Conceptual Change: How New Ideas Take Root? is based on ideas presented in Good Thinking! an original animated series developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) and FableVision Studios as a professional development resource for K-12 science educators.
Research over the past 30 years has documented what teachers have known from experience that students do not come to class as “blank slates”, but most often with a diverse set of ideas, concepts, and mental models that they have already developed from their life experiences. These ideas are called preconceptions, which are student ideas constructed before having formal instruction. Students use their own rules and mental models to make sense of their observations, and to explain phenomena that they encounter every day. One of the critical and ongoing challenges for educators across all grades is to discover students’ understandings and their mental models about phenomena, and when these models are based on misconceptions to provide opportunities for students to develop new understanding based on scientifically accepted concepts.
The activities in this workshop are designed to help teachers identify student misconceptions and understand their thought process, and to provide strategies that can lead students to develop sound reasoning and to experience conceptual change.
Upcoming start dates
Who should attend?
Prerequisites
None - This online workshop, “Conceptual Change: How new ideas take root”, is the first in a series of four online workshops supporting important ideas on the science of teaching science. Each workshop stands alone as a complete activity and the workshops can be taken in any order. At the end of each workshop, verified participants can produce a certificate of completion. In additions, verified individuals that complete all four of the online workshops in the series will be eligible to receive a certificate of completion, for the Science of Teaching Science I, provided by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) and edX
Course delivery details
This course is offered through The Smithsonian Institution, a partner institute of EdX.
4-5 hours per week
Costs
- Verified Track -$49.99
- Audit Track - Free
Certification / Credits
What you'll learn
Workshop Objectives:
- Identifying student misconceptions and mental models in science.
- Developing plans for using the identified student misconceptions and mental models to teach new ideas.
- Identify instructional strategies presented in the video to support conceptual change in science.
- Apply the strategies to planning new instruction
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edX
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