Picturing to Learn
Misconceptions in Science
"When I became responsible for teaching others ... through drawing ... I really had to understand the science and learned a great deal from the process."
The Picturing to Learn program was founded on the following core premises:
Drawings made by science students for the purpose of teaching others reveal misconceptions.
Those drawings provide teachers with direct feedback on what students are and are not "getting," helping promote more effective teaching.
The process of creating a drawing to teach others has the potential to deepen students' understanding of scientific concepts.
Picturing to Learn was funded by the National Science Foundation (DUE, 2007–2010). The project involved science students and faculty from Harvard, MIT, Duke University, and Roxbury Community College. Students were asked to "Create a freehand drawing to explain to a high school senior..." various scientific phenomena.
The idea began with Principal Investigator Felice Frankel's experiences working with scientists to visually express their research. When a researcher created drawings to explain a phenomenon, the process itself seemed to clarify the science in the researcher's mind. Frankel approached a team of educators and cognitive scientists with the idea of bringing this into the classroom, and all agreed it would be an innovative approach to teaching and learning.
The primary finding of the program was that the process was a powerful means of revealing student misconceptions. A database of 3,000 analyzed drawings from various undergraduate science courses documents this work.
"I was able to teach the material far better after seeing the students' drawings. They revealed misconceptions in a way that text does not — it became obvious when they didn't have a clue. As a whole, the class did far better on exams in 2005 than they did in 2004. We attribute that, in part, to Picturing to Learn."
Continuing the Conversation
The original Picturing to Learn project ran from 2007 to 2010, but the questions it raised — how students actually learn, how visual thinking shapes understanding, and how new tools change the classroom — are more relevant than ever.
Our blog explores where learning is headed now: the AI tools reshaping how students study, the software helping researchers work faster, and the online courses opening access to fields that once lived only behind university walls.
For teachers and science students
The National Science Teaching Association is a solid home base for classroom-tested science pedagogy.
For free interactive simulations, PhET at the University of Colorado is a long-running favourite.
Berkeley's Understanding Science explains how science actually works, misconceptions and all.
And a student stuck on a lab report who thinks “write my essay” is better served using a draft as a starting point they revise and verify.