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.
At last we can understand the obscure mystery of electric circuits. We simply need to ignore usual approach and instead look at the details of surface charge and "static electricity." See this excellent paper by Chabay and Sherwood (.pdf), (arcv) , authors of the undergrad physics textbook MATTER AND INTERACTIONS
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),(Not online, order it through interlibrary loan!)
Verlag Schmidt & Klaunig, 1985 (QC530.A78 1985)
More research: There's a handful of papers in these conference proceedings: Meaningful Learning Reseach Group:
- Proceedings of The 1st Int'l Seminar - Misconceptions and Educational Strategies in Science and Mathematics. Dr. Joseph Novak, MLRG
- 2nd Int'l Seminar
- 3rd Int'l Seminar
- 4th Int'l Seminar
- Ordering info (CDROM too!)
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 "
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)
An excellent college-level physics texbook:
ELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC INTERACTIONS, by Chabay/Sherwood
It unifies "static electricity" with the rest of circuit theory, and promotes lots of "intuitive/conceptual" reasoning rather than pure math
LINKS
- List of Students' physics misconceptions U. Dallas C3P project
- Paul B's Misconceptions References
- Chabay & Sherwood's References on the role of "static electricity" in electrical circuitry
- Misconceptions within textbooks, a list contributed by subscribers of the PHYS-L physics education group
Some Papers:
- A study of science-in-the-making as students generate an analogy for electricity (1995) Mark Cosgrove, University of Technology, Sydney
- Learning and Understanding Key Concepts of ElectricityReinders Duit, Christoph von Rh?eck
- Teaching Intro Electricity, D> Psillos
- Connecting Research in Physics Edu. with Teacher Edu.
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
