Correcting the Prescientific Conceptions of Schoolchildren

Abstract

In their out-of-school activities, children acquire a considerable amount of information about the world around them. The information reaching them from different sources generally has not been tailored to meet didactic needs, and in the child's mind it is transformed in various ways, some of which are compatible with scientific knowledge while others are contradictory to it. Hence, in many cases the formation of scientific concepts in the minds of schoolchildren, particularly in the area of physics, requires a fundamental overhauling of their prescientific, everyday notions.