25
2014
Vocabulary That Deceives: How Right Words Can Hide Inaccurate Ideas
An article by Dan Vincent
“Wow,” I thought to myself. “That’s a crazy idea.”
To most of us sciencey folks, the answer should have been quite simple; the word is ’evaporation.’ But consider what we actually claim to believe when use that term ‘evaporation’; we are saying that somehow, someway, all that water that has poured down onto the earth has moved miles up into the sky, against the force of gravity and in invisible form; it has ‘rained’ up.
In my work with students and adults, I have come to believe that many times our nice, packaged science vocabulary words actually cause us to not think about the science behind those terms. We have the word ‘evaporation’ so we don’t actually think deeper about the phenomenon under investigation. Maybe worse for us teachers and parents, we pass this assumed knowledge onto those we teach. That is one reason I enjoy using Formative Assessment Probes to start my science investigations (see Paige Keeley’s series Uncovering Student Ideas in Science); they typically don’t use science terms so students don’t have an ‘out’ when it comes to explaining things; the students have to use every day, non-sciencey language to answer. A great example related to evaporation is the probe entitled “Wet Jeans” (in Volume 1 of the series). Here is the scenario from the probe:
The wet jeans
Sam washed his favorite pair of jeans. He hung the wet jeans on a clothesline outside. An hour later the jeans were dry. Circle the answer that best describes what happened to the water that was in the wet jeans.
A. It soaked into the ground.
B. It disappeared and no longer exists.
C. It is in the air in an invisible form.
D. It moved upward and formed clouds.
E. It chemically changed into a new substance.
F. It went up to the Sun.
Explain your thinking. What ideas do you have to support your answer?
I have personally used this probe, and I have had my college students give this probe to upper elementary and middle school kids. The results are rather shocking; many students DO NOT pick the answer that is the most scientific (which is ‘C’ by the way). When we interview kids about their reasons, the kids cannot make sense of water being ‘invisible.’ It just does not make much sense to them, despite all of them knowing the term ‘evaporation.’ Many think that the water turns into a cloud (somehow missing the idea that it ‘rained up, invisibly’). Interestingly, most students also want to use the word ‘evaporation’ to try to explain their answer. The have a word, but do not seem to understand the concept behind the word.
There are many other examples of vocabulary words/phrases that deceive—condensation, buoyant force, friction, heat, conservation of mass, melting, dissolving. The list could include many other terms that we commonly use with students in our science classrooms. The words deceive….
So, one challenge for teachers is to let students use their everyday language to explain phenomenon. In fact, you might even force them to do this instead of using science vocabulary. The 5-E learning cycle actually has this as one of its basic tenents—students interact with the phenomenon first, prior to having the vocabulary. The goal is to understand the phenomenon in our own language prior to having the science term and formal definition to go with it. I have learned quite a bit from my own students when we challenge ourselves to NOT use science terms. Heck, 2 months ago, I learned an amazing thing about water from talking to a 7 and 9-year old. Now I need to find a way to introduce the actual term ‘evaporation’ to them!
Author: Dan Vincent, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Elementary Education Department of Curriculum & Instruction College of Education and Professional Studies University of Central Oklahoma
