Misconceptions Die Hard

The authors of the article conducted a study with students at various academic levels to determine their understanding of concept of floating and sinking of objects.  The results showed that a lot of students had misconceptions about these concepts and that there was little difference between the college students and elementary school children. Study showed that as students got older they used more sophisticated science vocabulary  but at the same time their understanding of the scientific concepts did not increase.
The outcome of this study perhaps show us that education of children in elementary and high school  science classes emphasized more terminology and less understanding of the concepts.  Or perhaps that the teaching methods did not address more real understanding of scientific concepts.
Students come to classroom with misconceptions and some simply reject explanations that are in conflict with their beliefs or that don't make sense to them.  Having that in mind, teachers should find out their students misconceptions before they teach new scientific concepts.  What can teachers do address students misconceptions in science classroom?  We should take into consideration ideas from socialist constructivist theory  which asserts that children cannot learn by passively absorbing knowledge but by being engaged in activities and then constructing meaning There should be a lot of hand-on inquiry based activities in the science classroom to challenge students preconceptions and to develop accurate understanding of the same.  Through hands- on activities and experiments students will gain some experience about scientific concepts are teaching. Then these concepts  will make sense to them.  This could enable students to adopt new concepts and change their own misconceptions or beliefs  they brought into classroom.  Some textbooks and teachers present scientific concepts too fast to students to develop understanding. So teacher should try to choose textbook  that presents the scientific concepts in very clear and extensive way with  lots of  examples how the concepts are applied   and explained in words and pictures.  Teachers could keep a track of misconceptions.  When teachers observe students during lab activities, they can ask probing questions as they encounter students' misconceptions. Teachers can use  formal and informal interviewing to  evaluate student progress and  find out about their possible misconceptions that can later be addressed individually.
When I return to the main features of  social constructivist model of teaching as described by Joseph S. Krajcik in the second chapter of his book " Teaching Children Science; A Project- Based Approach"  I realize that  constructivist classroom is the best model of teaching to address students misconceptions in science classroom.