Similar ideas are applicable to mathematics teaching and learning.
According to Blosser, research suggests that simply repeating a lesson or attempting to make a lesson clearer either in students' early educational experience or as they proceed through middle and high school will not help students who base their reasoning on strongly held misconceptions. These ideas strongly support the notion that teachers must understand the sorts of preconceptions and misconceptions students tend to develop in order to deal with those issues appropriately in the classroom. Children come to school already holding beliefs about how things happen, and have expectations based on past experiences which enable them to predict future events. They also possess clear meanings for words which are used both in everyday language and in a more specialized way in science. We invited Mary Kay Bouck and Dale Freeland to discuss how they address student-held models in their classrooms.