What are you doing to plug the gaps in science?

Many areas in science can’t be learned effectively unless other foundational knowledge is secure first. In many instances the chain is long and if one step is missed then all the subsequent ones fall apart. Some steps open up the possibility of understanding a great many more things, and these have been called “threshold concepts”.

Some areas in science are hard either because they draw upon a large complement of foundational knowledge or a tricky threshold concept, and a problem lower down the chain reverberates all the way up.

Misconceptions are a significant challenge in science. Pupils don’t arrive as blank slates, they bring their own theories, and what’s more they construct new (wrong) ones as we teach them.

Forces, electricity and particles are just three of the many misconception hotspots.

What makes a topic fertile ground for misconceptions? Often it’s abstraction, and experience of much more complicated situation: for example, friction always takes energy away from a system and means a force is needed to keep an object moving.

Developing Expert's platform has been designed to enable teachers to plug the gaps and address misconceptions. Tailor made catch up courses can be created to support pupils who have missed lessons catch up on the knowledge they need to ensure threshold concepts are mastered and misconceptions addressed.