Sandstone just looks like it’s made out of a load of sand stuck together
Sophia was a participant in the Understanding Science project. Sophia (a Y8 pupil) had been learning in class about different kinds of rocks, including
Sophia: When rocks … come from mountains, they like get worn away.
Interviewer: Mm, so what happens when you wear away the rock then?
S: Does it go like into a river, like a spring, and then gets carried – down, and gets smaller.…when it gets tiny, tiny would it turns into sand?
I: And then what happens to the sand, it just stays as sand does it?
S: Prob¬ … Yeah. …
I: Have you heard of a kind of rock called sandstone?
S: Yeah.
I: Any idea, what sandstone is?
S: It’s sand like, on the rock, it just looks like it’s made out of a load of sand stuck together.
Despite having been taught about the three categories of rock formation, Sophia had apparently only remembered the erosion stage in formation of the sedimentary rocks. Sandstone looked like it was made of a lot of sand stuck together, but for Sophia this seemed to be little more than a coincidence. She did not make the expected connection.
This seems to be an example of a fragmentation learning impediment, where the learner does not perceive the relevance of prior learning, and so does not use it to interpret teaching in the way intended by the teacher.
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Dr Keith S Taber kst24@cam.ac.uk
University of Cambridge Faculty of Education