Diagnosing, analysing and challenging misconceptions

First find out what students (know) think 

This resource  lists many of the common misconceptions in each sub area of the Science curriculum and uses multiple choice questions to help diagnose  how widely prevalent these are in your students. You can then analyse who thinks what in your classroom.

Then teach accordingly

Also these type of questions can be used as stimuli for students to make predictions and explanations and then observe demonstrations of some of these phenomena. Predict Explain Observe and then Re-explain is a very well known  powerful learning strategy and recent research by Brod confirms the efficacy of this approach.

Brod’s work highlights predicting as a distinct generative learning strategy that enhances learning by prompting learners to generate informed responses before receiving correct feedback. He argues that prediction goes beyond simple retrieval practice by engaging active semantic retrieval and inducing surprise when answers conflict with expectations, which increases attention to feedback and strengthens encoding (Brod, 2021).

This will allow the  creation of  cognitive conflict and set the scene for teacher led dialogue. These lesson starters can then be used to create lessons bridged from the five pillars of the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education methodology.

Challenging misconception using the multiple choice questions

You could use these questions  as a diagnostic tool, pre and post tests, retrieval practice and in may other ways.

Active classroom teacher led use 

I have found multiple choice question, in a appropriate context,  to be very fruitful. You can find out where students are and then immediately challenge their ideas. Whole class screen display of the question and 4 alternatives. Then use the 4 finger display 1, 2, 3, 4 eyes closed as an instant source of information for the teacher. You can then display the range of answers on the manual whiteboard. (Mini white boards, clickers and other technologies are very useful as alternatives). This technique has the advantage of making public and available the range of thinking without excluding anyone. Reflecting at this stage and at the end is very useful for student metacognition. However  a multi choice question as whole class activity can be very powerful with simple no threat techniques for answering  which then lead to very productive cognitive conflict and dialogue.

Then the explanations can be displayed and an open discussion can follow.

References

Brod, G. (2021) Predicting as a learning strategy, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28, pp.1839–1847. Springer

Brod, G. (2020) Generative Learning: Which Strategies for What Age?, Educational Psychology Review, 33, pp.1295–1318.