Preconceptions and Learning

Synonyms

Misconceptions; Alternative/commonsense conceptions; Naïve representations/knowledge; Spontaneous/commonsense ways of reasoning

Definition

Preconceptions are generally defined as opinions or conceptions formed in advance of “true” knowledge or experience. Thus, preconceptions can be considered also as prejudices or biases in forming scientific concepts. From the perspective of cognitive psychology, preconceptions can be defined as learner’s biased schemas of objects and phenomena.

Theoretical Background

From a constructivist point of view, learning science consists, to a large extent, in developing mental models and schemas of the world of objects and phenomena. Various theoretical approaches were developed that start from a common point of argumentation: solving any problem supposes to build a mental representation of the elements of this problem, and learners’ representations can be quite different of expected ones. di Sessa (1993), for instance, argues that learners build...