Miha Lee’s SLO Reflection #2
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Papers for Theoretical Understanding
(Is Using Discrepant Events an Effective Teaching Strategy to Promote Conceptual Change?
& The Importance of Prior Knowledge in Science Education)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF ASSIGNMENT
In the assignments, I examined the theory of cognitive science which is often called
“constructivism.”
The Importance of Prior Knowledge in Science Education informed me the fact that
students have abundant and strong preconceptions before formal education. Therefore, in my
instruction I have to actively elicit and connect students’ preconceptions with my teaching to
promote their conceptual understanding.
Besides, the effect of discrepant events as a way to promote conceptual change was
investigated. Usually, the cognitive conflict caused by a discrepant event is believed to letting
students to confront their misunderstanding, leading to conceptual change. However, I found
it is not true. Variety of response types to a discrepant event were revealed and discussed.
Many learners often fail to induce a meaningful cognitive conflict. Moreover, students’
learning attitude seems to be a mediator that affects the efficiency of discrepant events for
cognitive conflict.
CONNECTIONS TO THE SLO OF THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDING
I set up the ultimate goal of my practice as conceptual understanding since I became
a teacher. So, I am interested in the theory of conceptual change which emphasizes students’
active participation in and responsibility for their own learning. The assignments about the
importance of prior knowledge and the effect of discrepant events equip me with theoretical
understanding about how students learn. I have learned that my role as a teacher is to make
learning environments student-centered not only hands-on but also minds-on.
REFLECTION
The assignment ‘The Importance of Prior Knowledge in Science Education’ was for
a panel work. Dr.Rivas gave me praise for this work because he didn’t expect the work to be
that thorough. In our panel work, we were supposed to take a position and defend our
position against the opposite position. My position was for “Prior knowledge is the most
important thing for science teacher to be successful.” I think this protocol is kind of childish,
Miha Lee’s SLO Reflection #2
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but it highlights the importance of being familiar with students’ prior knowledge to make our
instruction more effective. So, I did a comprehensive work and learned the importance of
student-centered instruction. I came to understand the need for my pedagogical content
knowledge.
The assignment ‘Is Using Discrepant Events an Effective Teaching Strategy to
Promote Conceptual Change?’ was for position paper. While my classmates took positions
for the American or Californian educational policies, I wrote the paper from a general
educational problem because I am not familiar with those issues. Dr. Herr asked us to design
or collect lab activities for discrepant events to induce the need to know for our students. So,
I got interested in using discrepant events and began to collect information about discrepant
events. First, I searched for rational of using discrepant events, which led me to write the
paper. I found that as usual there is no one perfect solution for all problems. I mean using
discrepant events is just “a” way to teach for conceptual understanding. In fact, it is the
beginning step of having students confront their misconceptions in the process of conceptual
change. I also learned the importance of students’ active learning attitude that affects the
effect of discrepant events.
In those papers, I focused on only “individual constructivism”. However, in the
future, I will study more about the “social constructivism” because the classroom
environment is a small learning community in which students help each other learn. In
addition, I will exam the effect of motivation or metacognition that influence students’
learning attitude for conceptual change.