To illustrate how difficult it can be for individuals to modify their ideas, especially if they
learn primarily by rote, we cite the example of interviews done by the Private Universe
Project (PUP) at Harvard University (Schneps, 1989). The staff of PUP interviewed 23
Harvard graduates, alumni and faculty, asking each “Why do we have seasons?” Only
eleven concepts, properly organized are needed to understand why we have seasons, and
one arrangement of these concepts is shown in Figure 5. The PUP interviewers found that
21 of the 23 interviewed could not explain why we have seasons, a topic that is taught
repeatedly in school. Included in this group was a graduate who had recently taken a course
in the Physics of Planetary Motion, who also believed erroneously that seasons were
caused by the earth moving closer to the sun in summer and further away in the winter. In
fact, the earth is slightly closer to the sun when it is winter in Massachusetts, rather than in
summer. The primary reason we have seasons in latitudes away from the equator is due to
the tilt of the earth on its axis toward the sun in summer resulting in longer days and more
direct radiation, thus greater heating. In winter, the axis of the earth points away from the
sun, thus resulting in shorter days and less intense radiation. What is interfering with these
21 Harvard people is confusion with the common experience that when we are closer to a
fire or lamp, the heat is more intense than when we are further away. Thus, these people
have failed to recognize that this same phenomenon is not operating to give seasons on
Earth. They are transferring knowledge from one context to another, but incorrectly. This is
commonly observed in many, many examples of “misconceptions” in every field of study.
The only solution to the problem of overcoming misconceptions is to help learners learn
meaningfully, and using concept maps can be very helpful. (For more information on
misconceptions in science and mathematics see Novak (2002), and: www.mlrg.org)