P-prims

Phenomenological primitives

A topic in learners' conceptions and thinking

Implicit knowledge

Much of our processing of information takes place precociously. Research suggests that we have a body of 'intuitive knowledge elements' which we are not directly aware of, but which support us in having expectations about to world (and ro know when something surprising has happened) and are called upon in interpreting sensory information.

A great deal of processing occurs at pre-conscious levels. For example, when we see a laboratory flask, we are conscious of seeing an object. Yet before that is possible a great deal of mental processing has gone on at a preconscious level that has discriminated the object from a complex visual field, regardless of the angle of sight, distance, lighting conditions, background etc. (a flask looks a different shape, size, colour etc. depending upon viewing conditions). Although we can appreciate the processing that must have occurred, we are not aware of it, just as when we hear talk it generally 'arrives' in consciousness as a stream of words distinguished from background, and just as people are able to coordinate complex patterns of muscle contractions to, for example, climb stairs, without generally having any conscious awareness of which muscles they are contracting and how they sequence the myriad individual actions.

Taber, 2014b, p.450

These implicit elements support our 'intuitions'.

It is well established that much of our knowledge relating to movements is implicit – we all know how to walk (or so the evidence suggests) , and most of us know how to ride a bicycle, but we are generally not very good at explaining this in any detail. We 'know' which muscles to contract, in which order, and how much to contact each, to coordinate movements – but we could not actually give a detail account of this.

Of most relevance in science education is implicit knowledge that informs students' conceptual thinking.

Alternative conceptions

People often have conceptions of the world which are misjudged, and in science teaching learners' alternative conceptions are often an impediment to learning canonical scientific accounts. Not all alternative conceptions interfere with learning but many do and some are quite tenacious.

Read about alternative conceptions in science

Learners 'conceptions vary across a range of dimensions, one of which is the explicit – tacit/implicit dimension.

Our conceptions vary across a number of dimensions (after Figure 2.3 in Taber, 2014)

Although a person is not aware of their implicit knowledge, this does not mean they not use it. Just as we might take an instant dislike to someone without knowing why, we use implicit knowledge somettimes to reach judgements about aspect of the natural world without being aware of the basis of those judgements.

It is often said that the human brain has two 'systems' for thinking – one which is slow, deliberate and open to conscious inspection; and the other system that make very quick decisions, but is not open to interrogation. Sometimes when learners offer alternative conceptions in class they are consciously accessing ideas that have represented in long-term memory (often in verbal and/or diagrammatic form) and are expressing considered notions; but sometimes they are responding intuitively and then finding a way of describing what their 'gut feeling' tells them.

Phenomenological primitives

The physics education researcher Andreas diSessa interviewed many college physics students about various contexts to explore their thinking. He found that they often seemed to be using intuitions that they then verbalised and justified rather than reflecting on upon existing conceptual frameworks represented in memory. They sometimes used explicit knowledge of course, of course, but diSessa highlighted a large set of common features of the intuitions learners had, and he called these phenomenological primitives – or p-prims for short.

'Primitive' referred to the role within a person;s cogntiive system:

"Conceptions are specific notions that are of the form of propositions ('objects slow down because they run out of force', 'plants grow by taking material from the soil', 'chemical reactions occur so that atoms can fill their shells'). By contrast, the hypothetical 'atoms' of cognition are primitive in the sense of acting at an early (preconscious) stage of cognition".

Taber, 2008, p.1032

P-prims reflect common patterns in experience which have been recognised pre-consciously, and so inform a person's expectations about the world, and which inform a person's sense making.

P-prims reflect general patterns abstracted from experience, so unlike explicit conceptions, they are not tied to a specific domain of thinking – they can be activated any time they seem to match experience. Man of

"P-prims are not domain specific, as they represent intuitions of generalisable patterns, so at least some of diSessa's candidate p-prims are likely to be of wide relevance. However, as diSessa's study was limited to asking students about college physics contexts, it also seems plausible that it would not have revealed any p-prims that are seldom applied in those particular contexts

Taber, 2014

It is therefore an open question, for research, the extent to which p-prims that operate when learners study chemistry or biology or other subjects are the same ones identified from physics learning contexts.

There have been some suggestions of p-prims which may be operating when learner's intuitions influence their chemistry learning.

Read about p-prims in chemistry

Work cited:

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