Premium
Unlearning Aristotelian Physics: A Study of Knowledge‐Based Learning *
Author(s) -
DiSessa Andrea A.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1207/s15516709cog0601_2
Subject(s) - mathematics education , task (project management) , object (grammar) , set (abstract data type) , core (optical fiber) , protocol (science) , dynamics (music) , computer science , artificial intelligence , physics , psychology , pedagogy , engineering , medicine , telecommunications , alternative medicine , systems engineering , pathology , programming language
A study of a group of elementary school students learning to control a computer‐implemented Newtonian object reveals a surprisingly uniform and detailed collection of strategies, at the core of which is a robust “Aristotelian” expectation that things should move in the direction they are last pushed. A protocol of an undergraduate dealing with the same situation shows a large overlap with the set of strategies used by the elementary school children and thus a marked lack of influence of classroom physics training on this student's naive physics. The data from these two studies are pooled and elaborated into a “genetic task analysis” of how one might come to understand Newtonian dynamics as a more or less natural evolution from the naive state.