Facilitator: Patricia Armstrong, Assistant Director, CFT

Faculty Panelists: Kathy Friedman, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences; Ann Kindfield, Senior Lecturer, Department of Teaching and Learning

Students frequently come into our classrooms with certain misconceptions regarding the subject matter we teach. These misconceptions can serve as obstacles to student learning and frustrate faculty attempts to foster that learning. While some of these misconceptions may be of a relatively simple and naive sort that can be dispelled easily, others are more deeply entrenched and complex, and require a more mindful and direct intervention. In this spring's Conversations, we'd like to explore methods of fostering conceptual change in our students, particularly when students may tend to resist that change because of cherished misconceptions based on earlier education or other influences.

Panelists will be asked to address, among others, the following questions: What kinds of resistance have you encountered among students to the subjects that you teach? How do you address entrenched pre-conceptions that you view as obstacles to student learning in your discipline? To what extent do you address them, and why?

Cookies and drinks will be provided. Please feel free to bring your lunch.

Part 2 of this conversation will occur on March 11, 2009.