The next morning my child spoke to my spouse about this, which tells me it is in some way meaningful. But, the funny thing was that the new interpretation of the information was not quite right either. I have yet to re-address this, but knowing that Karen will, I think I’ll hold off.

This talking with our kids in an open, honest and intelligent way is FUN!

However, even with making the classroom an accepting environment to discuss a difficult topic, it is still sometimes really, really hard to help someone change their mental models. When I am teaching educational psychology to teachers or teachers-to-be, I like to show them this video (you can watch it for free). It’s about high school students’ understanding of the solar system and the reasons we have seasons (because of the earth’s tilt, not because we are any closer or further away from the sun). They ask the students for their mental models about the reason we have seasons, they show the teacher giving a lesson with the correct information, and they show the students with the exact same misconceptions. It took a particular kind of one-on-one breaking down of the concept for the students to begin to understand that their initial ideas were wrong.

This paradigm is present in all educational contexts, not just about the seasons.

However, making all of this even more complicated, the students in the video have misconceptions that might not have been immediately obvious on a test. The student that is shown the most probably could have gotten through on a multiple choice, and maybe even a short answer, test just fine because her misunderstanding was nuanced. To bring this home, for example, if I had asked ParentX’s student to describe the initial evidence of HIV infection, he probably could have given a fine description. If I had asked what kind of long-term complications are associated with AIDS, he could have written “death” and been correct (although I would have taken points off for lack of elaboration or evidence of clear understanding, he wouldn’t have gotten it wrong, and so probably would not have correct his misunderstanding).

This is all to say that really good tests are hard to write. There is just so much content that is covered in a classroom and in textbooks that it is literally impossible to test everything that is important. (This mirrors the arguments around standardized testing directly, but I’ll restrain myself from going into that here!)

Really good classroom activities can often provide a more nuanced understanding of a student’s knowledge and mental models, but are often time consuming when there is more new material that needs to be presented rather than doing activities around older material. In my not-for-credit classes I generally do not give tests, but rely on discussions and activities and exercises that the students enjoy participating in (because if they’re not learning and enjoying themselves, I have completely lost them!). In my for-credit classes I am generally required to give tests, although I would prefer to run them more like my not-for-credit classes.

I could go on at some length about these issues (and I do in my educational psychology classes!), because cognition and effective curriculum is really my second love after sex ed. Writing sex ed curriculum is fabulously fun stuff, coupling the nuances of how people learn with the critical information and skills that high quality sex education needs to provide.

Do you ever find students unwilling (or unable) to articulate a mental model that they know or fear may be flawed?

How do you know, in your classes, if you students have successfully been able to change to a correct mental model? Tests? Discussion and exercises?