Clinical+Interview

//**Clinical Interview**//

//This interview was conducted in three sections://

First, the child was questioned prior to any attempt to teach the concept.

1. What is gravity? 2. How does gravity work? 3. What do you know about orbit?
 * Questions:**

These questions were followed by two set of diagrams depicting a rock being dropped by a person standing adjacent to a fictional tunnel through the center of the Earth running North to South and then East to West. These diagrams were adapted from those presented and discussed in the article, //Gravity, Magnetism, and "Down": Non-physics College Students' Conceptions of Gravity.// by Anila Asghar and Julie C. Libarken.

In these diagrams, the child was asked to pick the representation that best suited his understanding of the way gravity would act on the rock in relation to the Earth with the tunnel. The child did this once with each set of diagrams. There was also an option for the child to draw in their own representation of the dropped rocks pathway to eliminate the child being forced to see any of the answers as correct or to fit his understanding to the pre-designed options.

[|Pre-teaching interview close-up]

North/South tunnel diagrams (child's drawing in red):

East/West tunnel diagrams (child's drawing in red): Secondly, the child was given the option of having a brief instructional period on gravity in order to address question by the student, as well as the purposeful addressing of any misconceptions the child was seen to hold during the pre-teaching interview. The child agreed.

[|Learning about gravity]

Finally, the child was given the option and agreed to respond to the same set of questions given the new information provided. This was done because I was interested in seeing how easy the misconceptions were to correct, and which would remain intact despite the conflict of information given.

[|Post-teaching interview]


 * Interpretation:**

All analysis of misconceptions and diagram answers is based on information from the previous article.

Asghar, A. and Libarken, J.C. (2010). Gravity, Magnetism, and "Down": Non-physics College Students' Conceptions of Gravity, //Science Educator//, 19(1): 42-55.


 * Many of the child's misconceptions were common amongst K-12 students, some of which were also found amongst college age students.
 * Some of his misconceptions were exclusive to college age notions.
 * One notion that is common for younger students that the child did not hold was relying on non-scientific explanations of gravity as something that just happens "naturally."
 * He did however believe that Gravity was exclusive to Earth. This misconception was easily corrected in the post-interview.
 * The child's notion of "down" was earth-centered. He saw it as referring to the Earth's surface rather than the core.  This is slightly more advanced than the common elementary absolute view of down, but very common amongst adolescents and college students.
 * The orientation of the tunnel did not alter his notion of gravity therefore, because the child did not see down as absolute and conclude that the rock would fall off the paper as many younger students do, and a few college students. This suggests that the child is transitioning his thinking from seeing down as the surface to down as the center.  More insight could be gained by repeating the diagram portion with a third set positioning the person "upside-down."
 * One variable that should be noted is the child's own explanation of his diagram selections as being the result of the person dropping the rock being in space (due to the dropper's proportion to the Earth drawing). The child maintained this conception despite an attempt to ask him to think of the thrower as standing on the ground.  He saw the rock as curving away and orbiting, then floating into space because he believed there is no gravity in space.
 * This may show an inability to reconcile his conception with the new information, and thus a reliance of what makes the most sense to him.
 * Though the child displayed a faulty understanding of the concepts of force and attraction, he displayed advanced thinking in his understanding of a force (defined as pulling) of attraction (toward) but was unable to verbalize any explanation of these concepts beyond this.
 * Even among college students, only 21% had a notion of force of attraction and of that 21% he matched 9% that held this notion with other misconceptions.
 * His post-teaching responses were more successful but still faulty in explanation the relation of force and mass.
 * Another common misconception amongst all ages was that gravity was caused or associated with the Earth's orbit or spinning as well as some association with the Sun.
 * He also maintained a functional definition of gravity in explaining why it exists as, keeping everything from floating away, using function as definition.
 * The child commonly referred to size rather than mass, even post-teaching, but the teaching was ineffective as explaining mass.

The child held many common misconceptions, both for his age and beyond. He also displayed some ideas that while still faulty, were advanced for his age group. He was able to easily rectify some misconceptions that did not bear the weight of altering other deeper notions. When placed in the situation of two discriminatory pieces of information that deeply impacted other notions, the child reverted back to comfortable conceptions.
 * CONCLUSIONS**