Resumen de Moving Beyond Misconceptions: Learning Progressions as a Lens for Seeing Progress in Student Thinking

Alicia C. Alonzo, Claudia von Aufschnaiter

• Addressing student conceptions with instruction has been a major issue in physics education for decades. However, too often the focus is on treating student ideas as “misconceptions” rather than as potentially productive ideas with varying degrees of sophistication. This paper introduces learning progressions as models that describe ideas students are likely to hold at varying levels of sophistication. This guidance can help us to focus on students’ existing understanding, rather than on what students do not yet know. With such nuanced and structured models of student learning, we can ensure that our assessments do not just check for whether students have the “right” answer, but obtain a more accurate “picture” of what students truly understand about the content to inform instruction that is responsive to students’ learning needs.