Towards an Instructional Theory: the Role of Student's Misconceptions*

Abstract

L During the past decade we have witnessed a new trend in cognitive research emphasizing expert systems. A great deal of effort has been dedicated to the study of experts' performance in various fields of knowledge .. My presentation today deals with the question: what kind of is needed for instruction? Researchers in the field agree that the process of learning necessarily combines three factors: the student, the teacher and the subject to be learned In addition, it seems obvious that to teach a given subject matter we need at least two kinds of expertise: the subject matter expert who can knowledgeably handle the discipline to be learned, who can see the underlying conceptual structure to be learned with its full richness and insights; and there is also, obviously, the expert teacher whose is in successfully bringing the student to know the given subject matter by various pedagogical techniques that make him the expert in teaching. In this framewmk of experts' systems, what is, then, the role of the student? what does he contribute to the learning situation? And though it might seem absurd, I would like to suggest that the student's expertise is in making errors; that this is his contribution to the process of learning My talk consists of three main parts First, I will focus on the contribution of performance errors to the process of learning. I will, then, demonstrate that enors do not occm randomly, but originate in a consistent conceptual framework based on earlier acquired knowledge I will conclude by arguing that any futme instructional theory will have to change its perspective from condemning errors into one that seeks them .. A good instructional program will have to predict types of errors and purposely allow for them in the process of learning But before we reach such an extreme conclusion let me build the argument and clarify what these welcomed enors are