IntroductionIn this review, we discuss (1) how the notion of conceptual change has developed over the past three decades, (2) giving rise to alternative approaches for analysing conceptual change, (3) leading towards a multi-perspective view of science learning and instruction that (4) can be used to examine scientific literacy and (5) lead to a powerful framework for improving science teaching and learning. Development of the notion of conceptual change Historical developmentsResearch on students' and teachers' conceptions and their roles in teaching and learning science has become one of the most important domains of science education research on teaching and learning during the past three decades. Starting in the 1970s with the investigation of students' pre-instructional conceptions on various science content domains such as the electric circuit, force, energy, combustion, and evolution, the analysis of students' understanding across most science domains has been comprehensively documented in the bibliography by Duit (2002). Two decades ago, research by Gilbert, Osborne and Fensham (1982) showed that children are not passive learners and the way they make sense of their experiences led to this intuitive knowledge being called "children's science" (p. 623). Findings from many studies over the past three decades show that students do not come into science instruction without any pre-instructional knowledge or beliefs about the phenomena and concepts to be taught. Rather, students already hold deeply rooted conceptions and ideas that are not in harmony with the science views or are even in stark contrast to them. It is noteworthy that there are still a remarkable number of studies on students' learning in science that primarily investigate such students' conceptions on the content level. Since the middle of the 1980s investigations of students' conceptions at meta-levels, namely conceptions of the nature of science and views of learning (i.e., meta-cognitive conceptions) also have been given considerable attention. Research shows that students' conceptions here are also rather limited and naive.The 1980s saw the growth of studies investigating the development of students' pre-instructional conceptions towards the intended science concepts in conceptual change approaches. Research on students' conceptions and conceptual change has been embedded in various theoretical frames over the past decades. Initially, Piagetian ideas were applied that drew primarily on stage theory on the one hand and his clinical interview on the other. Also basic frameworks of the emerging theories of cognitive psychology were adopted.Later analogous to that of mindfulness (Salomon & Globerson, 1987, p. 623), a "construct which reflects a voluntary state of mind, and connects among motivation, cognition and learning." The concept of conceptual changeResearch on the concept of conceptual change has developed a unique vocabulary because conceptual change can happen at a number of levels and different authors use alternative terms to descri...

Care is necessary when comparing what is said in literature about analogy and metaphor. Different authors usually have different-sometimes substantially different-concepts in mind when employing these terms. In the following, an attempt is made to outline the way the terms are used in the subsequent sections of this paper. On the Meaning of AnalogiesThe use of the term analogy in this paper refers to comparisons of structures between two domains. Figure 1 outlines what is meant in a more formal way. All the boxes stand for representations (R). As portrayed in a pictorial way, there may be identical features in parts of the structures of R , and R2. RM represents this structural identity. We call RM a model. There is an analogical relation between Science Education 75(6): 649-672 (1991)

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Thirty-four clinical interviews were conducted with Grade 10 students (15-16 years old) who had received four years of physics instruction. The interview's focus was to understand students' responses from their point of view and not solely from the physicist's angle. The results of the study confirm and deepen, on the one hand, findings from other studies concerning students' severe difficulties in leaming the energy concept, the particle model, and the distinction between heat and temperature. On the other hand, students' qualitative conceptions in a new area-the second law of thermodynamics-are revealed. For instance, in the case of irreversibility (i.e., the idea that all processes take place by themselves only in one direction), most students came to conclusions similar to those of modem physicists. But their explanations of irreversibility are based on significantly different conceptual frameworks. The results of the study suggest that a mere enlargement of the traditional physics curriculum by the addition of ideas of the second law is not sufficient to familiarize students with these ideas. A totally new teaching approach to heat, temperature, and energy is necessary. In this approach, basic qualitative ideas of the second law should be a central and integral part from the beginning of instruction.