Ms. Kontos is teaching a unit on human vision to her fifth-grade class. She shows her students a diagram of the various parts of the human eye, such as the lens, cornea, pupil, retina, and optic nerve. She then explains that people can see objects because light from the sun or another light source bounces off those objects and into their eyes. To illustrate this idea, she shows them Picture A
.
“Do you all understand how our eyes work?” she asks. Her students nod that they do.
The next day Ms. Kontos gives every student a copy of Picture B
.
She asks students to draw one or more arrows on the picture to show how light enables the child to see the tree. More than half of the students draw an arrow similar to the one shown in Picture C
.
Obviously, most of Ms. Kontos’s students have not learned what she thought she had taught them about human vision.
A. Explain why many students believe the opposite of what Ms. Kontos has taught them. Base your response on contemporary principles and theories of learning and cognition.
B. Describe two different ways in which you might improve on this lesson to help students gain a more accurate understanding of human vision. Base your strategies on contemporary principles and theories of learning and cognition.
Many elementary school children think of human vision in the way that Ms. Kontos’s fifth graders do
—that is, as a process that originates in the eye and goes outward toward objects that are seen. When students revise their thinking to be more consistent with commonly accepted scientific explanations, they are said to be
A.
revising their worldview.
B.
acquiring a new script.
C.
undergoing conceptual change.
D.
acquiring procedural knowledge.