Misconception-focused Pedagogy

Whenever we introduce a concept to a new learner, there are inevitably a series of misconceptions (literally, they have "missed" or "misunderstood" the concept) that the learner works through to gain proficiency. Somewhat surprisingly, these misconceptions are relatively consistent across learners.

When constructing instructional material, one approach would be to systematically combat each misconception as they arise. This is a different focus because we normally aim for comprehension through explanation and treat misconceptions as "failures to comprehend." Instead, misconceptions should be treated as the stones on the path to comprehension. Rather than failure, they represent progress.

One challenge to building instructional materials this way is that, due to the Curse of Expertise, experts are virtually incapable of identifying the misconceptions of novices. In order to build a list of misconceptions, we need to extract those from observed misconceptions for novice learners.

Credit to Shriram Krishnamurthi's talk "Programming Before You Program" for this idea.