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Some References for Electricity Misconception Research







 My personal work on electricity misconceptions took place in 
the mid 1980s, back when professional miscon research first took off.  To 
get started, go search on Google 
Scholar for work by Shipstone, 
Osborne, Cohen, McDermott/vanZee.  Note however that they're concerned with 
pre-existing "naive 
concepts" which children bring to class, not with the 
powerful infectious "misconceptions-memes" which inhabit K-12 textbooks 
and the minds of K-12 educators.










MATTER AND 
INTERACTIONS, VOL 2, new undergrad textbook. 

 At last we can understand the obscure mystery of electric circuits. We 
simply need to ignore the 1950s-based orthodox approach, and instead study  
the actual details of surface charge and "static electricity."  
They promote initial visual/intuitive grasp of physics concepts, only 
later followed by the equations.  
See this excellent paper by  Chabay and Sherwood (.pdf),  (arcv), authors of the new undergrad physics textbook 
M&I above, which correctly presents the battery-powered flashlight as 
fundamentally being an electrostatics-based device.












Are we teaching electricity the wrong way around? (2014)

ABC network: Complaints about decades of incorrect electricity teaching.
The author presents a CORRECT basic explanation of simple circuits; 
a combination of Sefton's work (below,) plus the electrostatics-based 
circuit-explanations from Chabay/Sherwood's novel 
University physics textbook "Matter and Interactions."  Wow.  FINALLY the 
world is starting to wake up and notice the problem (and, even start to 
make some corrections!)  Lets see, 1984, 2014, that THIRTY YEARS to even 
begin to make simple changes.  "Begin."  Since the changes aren't yet in 
any grade-school textbook anywhere, just in Chabay/Sherwood's recent book.








2002 
Understanding Electricity and Circuits: What the Text Books Don't Tell You (pdf) & Sefton's site



Sefton goes after numerous common misconceptions.  The path of electrical 
energy in circuits, versus the different path followed by currents.   
And, the 
"static electricity" which 
drives all electric circuits.  Carriers flow slowly, energy goes fast.   
Circuits are coils, circuits are 
capacitors.  This is a physics paper for non-physicists, light on the 
math.









Energy transfer in electric circuits: Qualitative,
Galili/Goihbarg 2004

From American Journal of Physics.  
Another Poynting-based explanation of simple DC flashlight circuits, 
details of the EM energy-flow.  A bit heavier on vector field concepts 
than with the above paper by Sefton.







 What is 'electricity?'  The experts have very clear 
things to say about this. They contradict the way typical K-12 
textbooks define and explain "electricity."  So who's the greater 
authority, your grade-school textbook, or Maxwell/Faraday/Einstein etc.?  
Why should we believe the CRC handbook and NIST/SI standards group and 
Millikan and Thompson, since the great and powerful World Book 
Encyclopedia disagrees with them?









ACTUAL RESEARCH PAPERS: A large, excellent collection of research on 
electricity misconceptions:



   ASPECTS OF UNDERSTANDING ELECTRICITY: PROCEEDINGS OF AN INTERNATIONAL
   WORKSHOP,  R. Duit, W. Jung, C. von Roneck (Eds),

   Verlag Schmidt & Klaunig, 1985       (QC530.A78 1985)

(Not online, order it through interlibrary loan!)









More research: There's a handful of papers in these conference proceedings:
Meaningful Learning Reseach Group:








SOME BOOKS




 For a K-12 classroom textbook which is far above average, try 
Prentice Hall's "Science Explorer" series, the volume on "Electricity 
and Magnetism" by Dr. C. Wainwright of the excellent CASTLE 
project. This one dates from 2007, and like Dr. M.S Steinberg's CASTLE 
program, it lacks all of the misconceptions I discuss on this site. I 
don't know if later Prentice Hall editions lack these errors.  Wainwright 
isn't a listed author on the other editions, and few authors are aware of 
the ongoing scandal regarding textbook errors (or are even aware of their 
own misconceptions.)










New (2002,) Smithsonian/National Academies 

" 
Electrical Energy and Circuit Design." 
The authors built an entire middle-school electricity curriculum 
from scratch, and avoided nearly every error on my misconceptions list, 
even including my separate 'static electricity' list. 







What about all the engineering students who acquired a headful of 
misconceptions in grade school? Darren Ashby is now (2005) selling a 
"textbook" which carefully goes through point-by-point and repairs all the 
damage. So, now I won't have to write one myself! 
"Electrical 
Engineering 
101: Everything You Should Have Learned in School...but Probably Didn't
" 








Try Morrison's Fields of Electronics
  The author knocks down numerous E&M misconceptions at the college 
level.  book blurb:



"A practical new approach that brings together circuit theory and field 
theory for the practicing engineer.  
To put it frankly, the traditional education of most engineers and 
scientists leaves them often unprepared to handle many of the practical 
problems they encounter. The Fields of Electronics: Understanding 
Electronics Using Basic Physics, offers a highly original correction to 
this state of affairs." (Note that it's a free PDF download if 
accessed from many college libraries.)
 







There Are No Electrons, Ken Amdahl

Very fascinating story-telling method for explaining basic electricity 
and electronics







Paperback on Lightning (and misconceptions), for the general public:


All About Lightning, Dr Martin A. Uman







On of the few books which explain "electricity" correctly:


"
Basic Electricity JE-101" by Gene McWhorter, 1984, a RADIO SHACK book
(out of print! Rats!  Try his later version, 
The Electricity Book)












LINKS









Some Papers:










McDermott, L.C. & van Zee, E.H. (1984). Identifying and addressing
student difficulties with electric circuits. Proceedings of the
International Workshop: Aspects of Understanding Electricity,
Pdagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg, W. Germany, pp. 39-4







Shipstone, D. (1988). Pupils' understanding of simple electrical circuits:
Some implications for instruction. Physics Education, 23(2):92-96. 







Some misc. Electronics Books I recommend
































 


















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