Discrepant Events
Counter-Intuitive Phenomena
Counter-Intuitive Phenomena
Note- This activity is repeated for assignments 1 & 2
(1) Discrepant Event Video - Make a video of a YOU performing a discrepant event. (Do not use someone else's video).
VIDEO - Discrepant Events [6:12]
(2) Slideshow - Embed your video of the discrepant event in your slideshow
Diagrams & Explanation - Provide diagrams and a scientific explanation of the scientific principles involved.
VIDEO -Creating a slideshow as a basis for a video [4:41]
VIDEO -Animating Diagrams in Google Slides [5:08]
VIDEO -Animating Diagrams-2 (cardiac circulation) [2:03]
VIDEO -Mystery Container - Siphons - Making a movie from Google Slides [14:53]
Applications - Describe real-life applications of the scientific principles involved.
(3) Explanatory Video - Create an explanatory video from your slide show, providing annotations to draw students attention to key events. Use your video in class to engage the class as learners with your discrepant event.
VIDEO: Animating diagrams in Google Slides to make explanations [5:08] - File -practice
VIDEO: Using the Zoom Annotation tool when making explanatory movies [5:35]
VIDEO: Screen recorders. (Quicktime, ScreenCastify, Zoom, etc.)
(4) Reflections on use in the classroom - Describe how this activity was employed and its effectiveness.
(5) Others' Videos - watch all of the explanatory videos of your colleagues. Select five that you can use and link them here.
Research by cognitive scientists indicates that when initial visual processing is relatively easy, effortless, and “automatic,” subsequent memory for an event is typically poor, but when processing is difficult, extensive, or elaborate, retention is relatively high. For example, people remember unexpected visual images better than common visual images because they require a greater degree of analysis and invoke more semantic processing. Advertisers frequently use this principle when promoting a product. For example, an advertiser may hide the company logo of the product in a relatively abstract scene. The viewer, by struggling to determine the meaning of the scene, discovers the logo and remembers it well.
Science teachers can also employ discrepant scenes and events to promote memory of important principles. For example, students expect wood to float and rocks to sink when placed in water. When a piece of ebony wood is placed in a container of water, students are surprised to see it sink, and when a chunk of pumice rock is placed in the same container, they are surprised to see it float. The discrepant visual images of sinking wood and floating rock can help students remember Archimedes’ principle, which describes the conditions under which a substance will sink or float. Science teachers should employ many discrepant events because they trigger more elaborate processing and better memory.
Discrepant Teaching Events: Using an Inquiry Stance to Address Students’ Misconceptions (J. Longfield, International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 2009, Volume 21, Number 2, 266-271)
Chapter-5, Developing Scientific Reading: Discrepant Events. Herr, N. (2008). The Sourcebook for Teaching Science – Strategies, Activities, and Instructional Resources. San Francisco. John Wiley. 584 pages.
Discrepant events—demonstrations that produce unexpected outcomes—are used in science to capture students’ attention and to confront their beliefs about a “phenomenon by producing an outcome which is contrary to what their previous experiences would lead them to believe is true” (Misiti, 2000, p. 34). Science teachers have long known that the use of this teaching strategy, which Sokoloff and Thornton (1997) call an interactive lecture demonstration, can be a powerful means of uncovering students’ preconceptions about science phenomena at the same time that it activates the thinking and learning process
EXAMPLE: Black-Box Science
EXAMPLE: Variety of Discrepant Events
Many of the following demonstrations are discrepant events.
Sick Science - Spangler Science
Easy Science Experiments - We are Teachers
Science Demonstrations - James Lincoln
Home Science - various
Chemistry Demonstrations - Andrew Szydlo
Discrepant Events - WST