Conceptual change: A powerful framework for improving science teaching and learning

Abstract

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...

What Do You Know about Alternative Energy? Development and Use of a Diagnostic Instrument for Upper Secondary School Science

“…If these alternative conceptions are not challenged, they can interfere with the integration of new information, resulting in more deeply-held alternative conceptions (Duit & Treagust, 2003;Duit, Treagust & Widodo 2013).…”

Pedagogy of Science Teaching Tests: Formative assessments of science teaching orientations

“…They believed that reception learning could be meaningful with appropriate instructional design; Novak (1976) referred to this as direct facilitation of concept learning, and various tools such as advance organizers and concept mapping for fostering meaningful reception learning have been developed (Mayer, 1979;Stone, 1983;Trowbridge & Wandersee, 2005). Research on conceptual change (Duit & Treagust, 2003;Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982;Thorley & Stofflett, 1996), the use of explanatory analogies (Dagher, 1995(Dagher, , 2005 and bridging analogies (Clement, 1982(Clement, , 1998Clement, Brown, & Zietsman, 1989), research on combining verbal learning with visual learning (Clark & Paivio, 1991;Culatta, 2012), etc. all involve forms of instruction that try to directly facilitate meaningful conceptual learning.…”

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“…This seems to be the case for the other papers by Rachael Lancor as well. If we would replace the term "conceptual metaphor" when reading the papers by "students' conceptions" as used in the students' (alternative) conceptions field (Duit & Treagust, 2003) this would work well. In other words, it seems that key ideas of the conceptual metaphor field are not in the foreground.…”