1Third Misconceptions Seminar Proceedings (1993) Paper Title: Overcoming Misconceptions by Challenging Text-book Orthodoxy

Abstract: My concern with the problem of misconceptions and text books is part of a broader plan to improve the introductory university physics curriculum. I will argue here that some aspects of orthodox physics do nothing to overthrow some kinds of naive preconceptions and that they can also actively introduce new, learned, misconceptions. By preconceptions I mean ideas that students generate independently of school learning, while incorrect or unorthodox knowledge constructed during formal learning will be called misconceptions. At the most trivial level, mistakes or wrong information in texts can generate misconceptions, but that is not my concern here. Although language is part of the structure of knowledge, there are some kinds of misconceptions that can be traced simply to the orthodox language of physics, without reference to the overall structure of the subject. Because physics is reductionist in its approach to the world and its knowledge is organised hierarchically, other kind