The Dangers of Misconceptions
For quite a long time I was not particularly concerned about misconceptions. Trained in a predominantly exploratory and student-centred style, misconceptions were inevitable in my lessons. Requiring novices to work in groups and to access material with limited or no support effectively guaranteed that, at least to some degree, children would misunderstand some content. The only way to avoid this was to make the content so simple that it wasn’t challenging.
This didn’t really worry me. After all, I thought, the world is a complicated place and misconceptions are part of life – I believed that by allowing my students to make them I was being more authentic and thought that their gradually improving historical skill would mean that, in the end, any stains would come out in the wash.
I now think this attitude was both misguided and damaging.
Cognitive load theory suggests that once a schema is formed it is quite inflexible. If we come to believe something which isn’t true, then we find it very tough to change our minds. This might be because we derive our sense of identity from our schemas, which means adapting them also means changing things about ourselves from which we get a reassuring sense of belonging and security. Generally, we don’t like what we hold close to be challenged so, when faced with contradictory information, we are probably more likely to ignore, disbelieve or challenge it than we are to engage.
This may be an explanation for why very clever people sometimes hold views that seem very silly to other people. I know an intelligent, articulate, kind and passionate creationist. I find this very hard to conceptualise. In order to interact with him I have to ignore the fact he is a creationist and actively avoid discussing any scientific topic as, I am sure, he does too. Neither of us are willing to listen to arguments that contradict the schemas on which our worldviews are constructed.