Conceptual change

Strategies for conceptual change in school science

by John Paul Riordan

Riordan, J. P. (2012), 'Strategies for conceptual change in school science', in New Perspectives in Science Education: Conference Proceedings Edited by Pixel, Florence, Italy, March 8 - March 9, 2012, Simonelli Editore, University Press, pp. 279-284. ISBN 9788876477577. Available at: http://www.pixel-online.net/science/common/download/Paper_pdf/127-SSE10-FP-Riordan-NPSE2012.pdf (Accessed: 16th March 2012)

    This study explores how experienced science teachers promote conceptual change. It examines how... more     This study explores how experienced science teachers promote conceptual change. It examines how instructional strategies, learning tactics (Darden, 1991) and conceptual change interrelate. Pupils must construct new concepts while still having old ones (diSessa, 2006, p.265). Their evolving learning tactics are sometimes distorted by naïve techniques (Zimmerman, 2005).
    Three research methods (expert microteaching, verbal protocols and retrospective debriefing) were used. Data was video-recorded and managed using NVivo 9. Six 11 year-old pupils took part (three girls and three boys) in each expert microteaching interview, led by a science specialist (Advanced Skills Teacher). A ‘Concurrent Verbal Protocol and Retrospective Debriefing’ interview (Taylor and Dionne, 2000, p.413) happened with the teacher one month later. Six teachers participate altogether. Twelve hours of interview data were analysed using grounded theory methods (Corbin and Strauss, 2008, p.2). The interpretivist theoretical perspective (symbolic interactionism) was underpinned by a social constructionist epistemology.
Initial findings show teachers use nine ‘teaching instruments’, ten ‘skill stratagems’ and six ‘deception stratagems’. Pupils demonstrate three learning tactics. Failure (strategic friction) is also explored.
    What can be considered evidence is a function of the researcher’s methodological position (Pearson, 2004, p.47). So what constitutes reliable evidence can be contentious. Appropriate criteria for evaluating the grounded theory emerging from this study (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, p.294) were used. Interpretivist approaches for investigating conceptual change in school science are necessary to avoid unbalanced dominance by positivist literature. This approach, proved successful in other fields (Taylor and Dionne, 2000, p.417), is new to this context. The assumption that instructional strategy is straightforward (for example by Clement, 2008, p.445) does not adequately explain the data collected here. However, abandoning attempts to unpick complicated interactions between pupils and teacher whilst learning takes place, leaves practitioners without guidance. Consensus exists among most conceptual change researchers that instructional strategies, learning tactics and conceptual change must be considered together where possible (Klahr, 2000). This present study proposes a grounded theory for how experienced science teachers promote conceptual change and questions how instructional strategy is understood in the literature.

Aydeniz, M. (2012).What do middle and high school students know about the particulate nature of matter after Instruction? Implications for practice. School Science and Mathematics,112(2), 59-65.

by Mehmet Aydeniz

Understanding the beliefs informing children’s commonsense theories of motion: The role of everyday object variables in dynamic event predictions

by Michael Hast

Research in Science & Technological Education, 30, 3-15 (2012)

Co-authored with Christine Howe

Intuitive theories and teleological explanations about animals and plants

by Nathalie Bedoin

The cognitive status of plants as a biological category remains unclear in the conceptual organisation.
A series... more The cognitive status of plants as a biological category remains unclear in the conceptual organisation.
A series of five experiments investigated whether adults agree with different kinds of teleological assertions
to account for attributes of animals or plants. One major finding is that adults are inclined towards explanations that evoke an advantage for other species to motivate the existence of attributes in plants,
but not in animals. This supports our assumption about social-serving teleological reasoning for plants, as
for artefacts, and may contribute to increase the ambiguous status of plants within the unified concept of
living thing. Therefore, plants may not only differ from animals by the low relevance of an intuitive psychology
to account for their properties, but also by their tendency to trigger intuitive explanations devoted to
artefacts.

The Effect of Conceptual Change Approach to Eliminate 9th Grade High School Students’ Misconceptions about Air Pressure

by Halil Eksi

Yavuz AKBAŞ
Ebru GENÇTÜRK
Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice - 11(4) • Autumn • 2217-2222

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of teaching based on conceptual change overcome... more The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of teaching based on conceptual change overcome misconceptions of 9th grade high school students about the subject of air pressure. The sampling of the study was formed with two classes of 9th grade students from a general high school in the city-center of Trabzon. A quasi-experimental method was used in the study as a research design. One of the classes that was selected for the study was chosen as a control group (n=45), and the other class was chosen as an experiment group (n=45). While conceptual change texts and concept maps were used to teach air pressure subject to the experiment group, traditional teaching methods were used to teach the same subject to the control group. For the purpose
of collecting data, Success Test and Concept Test were implemented. The control and experiment groups’ pre-test and post-test scores were analyzed by t test. Analysis of the data showed that there was not a statistically
significant difference between the control and the experiment group in the pre-test in terms of the concept understanding achievement. However, post-test results showed that there was a significant difference in favor of the experiment group. It was concluded that teaching methods and materials based on conceptual change were more effective than traditional teaching methods to teach air pressure subject.

Hooks and shifts: a dialectical study of mediated discovery

by Dor Abrahamson

Abrahamson, D., Trninic, D., Gutiérrez, J. F., Huth, J., & Lee, R. G. (2011). Hooks and shifts: a dialectical study of mediated discovery. Technology, Knowledge, and Learning, 16(1), 55-85.

Radical constructivists advocate discovery-based pedagogical regimes that enable students to incrementally and... more Radical constructivists advocate discovery-based pedagogical regimes that enable students to incrementally and continuously adapt their cognitive structures to the instrumented cultural environment. Some sociocultural theorists, however, maintain that learning implies discontinuity in conceptual development, because novices must appropriate expert analyses that are schematically incommensurate with their naive views. Adopting a conciliatory, dialectical perspective, we concur that naive and analytic schemes are operationally distinct and that cultural–historical artifacts are instrumental in schematic reconfiguration yet argue that students can be steered to bootstrap this reconfiguration in situ; moreover, students can do so without any direct modeling from persons fluent in the situated use of the artifacts. To support the plausibility of this mediated-discovery hypothesis, we present and analyze vignettes selected from empirical data gathered in a conjecture-driven design-based research study investigating the microgenesis of proportional reasoning through guided engagement in technology-based embodied interaction. 22 Grade 4–6 students participated in individual or paired semi-structured tutorial clinical interviews, in which they were tasked to remote-control the location of virtual objects on a computer display monitor so as to elicit a target feedback of making the screen green. The screen would be green only when the objects were manipulated on the screen in accord with a ‘‘mystery’’ rule. Once the participants had developed and articulated a successful manipulation strategy, we interpolated various symbolic artifacts onto the problem space, such as a Cartesian grid. Participants appropriated the artifacts as strategic or discursive means of accomplishing their goals. Yet, so doing, they found themselves attending to and engaging certain other embedded affordances in these artifacts that they had not initially noticed yet were supporting performance subgoals. Consequently, their operation schemas were surreptitiously modulated or reconfigured—they saw the situation anew and, moreover, acknowledged their emergent strategies as enabling advantageous interaction. We propose to characterize this two-step guided re-invention process as: (a) hooking— engaging an artifact as an enabling, enactive, enhancing, evaluative, or explanatory means of effecting and elaborating a current strategy; and (b) shifting—tacitly reconfiguring current strategy in response to the hooked artifact’s emergent affordances that are disclosed only through actively engaging the artifact. Looking closely at two cases and surveying others, we delineate mediated interaction factors enabling or impeding hook-and-shift learning. The apparent cognitive–pedagogical utility of these behaviors suggests that this ontological innovation could inform the development of a heuristic design principle for deliberately fostering similar learning experiences.

Some assembly required: How scientific explanations are constructed in clinical interviews

by Victor Lee

Co-authors: Bruce Sherin and Moshe Krakowski, based on data obtained on Sherin's NSF CAREER grant

This article is concerned with commonsense science knowledge, the informally gained knowledge of the natural world... more This article is concerned with commonsense science knowledge, the informally gained knowledge of the natural world that students possess prior to formal instruction in a scientific discipline. Although commonsense science has been the focus of substantial study for more than two decades, there are still profound disagreements about its nature and origin, and its role in science learning. What is the reason that it has been so difficult to reach consensus? We believe that the problems run deep; there are difficulties both with how the field has framed questions and the way that it has gone about seeking answers. In order to make progress, we believe it will be helpful to focus on one type of research instrument—the clinical interview—that is employed in the study of commonsense science. More specifically, we argue that we should seek to understand and model, on a moment-by-moment basis, student reasoning as it occurs in the interviews employed to study commonsense science. To illustrate and support this claim, we draw on a corpus of interviews with middle school students in which the students were asked questions pertaining to the seasons and climate phenomena. Our analysis of this corpus is based on what we call the mode-node framework. In this framework, student reasoning is seen as drawing on a set of knowledge elements we call nodes, and this set produces temporary explanatory structures we call dynamic mental constructs. Furthermore, the analysis of our corpus seeks to highlight certain patterns of student reasoning that occur during interviews, patterns in what we call conceptual dynamics. These include patterns in which students can be seen to search through available knowledge (nodes), in which they assemble nodes into an explanation, and in which they converge on and shift among alternative explanations.

ReTweeting History: Exploring the intersection of microblogging and problem-based learning for historical reenactments

by Victor Lee

co-authored with colleagues at Utah State. Based on site and service created by Caswell & Jensen. Contact for more info. Available in upcoming volume, "Designing problem-driven learning using online social media"

Historical reenactments are an activity in which history enthusiasts research historical figures and gather to act out... more Historical reenactments are an activity in which history enthusiasts research historical figures and gather to act out a famous historical event as those individuals. This chapter describes a development and implementation framework for conducting historical reenactments virtually using the Twitter microblogging service. Following a general introduction to the practices associated with historical reenactment, we describe the steps involved in successfully organizing a virtual reenactment, share some examples from already completed virtual reenactments, and present a firsthand retrospective and reflection from a high school teacher who led her history students in a virtual reenactment of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We discuss some central challenges associated with aligning virtual reenactments to problem-based learning approaches and close with specific proposals for improvements that could be made in future implementations. 

Machine Reading As a Cognitive Science Research Instrument

by Jakub Czyz

Young children’s explicit and tacit understanding of object speed and acceleration

by Michael Hast

Educate~ Kaleidoscope Special Issue, 92-93 (2009)

Explicit versus tacit knowledge in early science: Young children’s understanding of object speed and acceleration

by Michael Hast

Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 3831 (2010)

Co-authored with Christine Howe

Conceptual change in young children’s explicit and tacit understanding of object speed and acceleration

by Michael Hast

Educate~ Kaleidoscope Special Issue, 65 (2011)

Explicit versus tacit knowledge in early science education: The case of primary school children’s understanding of object speed and acceleration

by Michael Hast

Doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge (2011)

Available at http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/237250

Towards a complete commonsense theory of motion: The interaction of dimensions in children’s predictions of natural object motion

by Michael Hast

International Journal of Science Education (2011). Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/09500693.2011.604685

Co-authored with Christine Howe

Actor-Networking the Failed State - An Inquiry into the Life of Concepts

by Christian Bueger

co-authored with Felix Bethke, under review.

Globally circulated concepts, such as the concept of failed states connect academia and global politics. Indeed, such... more Globally circulated concepts, such as the concept of failed states connect academia and global politics. Indeed, such concepts are jointly produced by academics and other actors. Little attention has been spent to study these concepts as objects. In this article we develop a framework for studying the circulation of concepts in relying on guidelines from actor-network theory. We suggest studying concepts as effects of relations between different actors building the actor-network the concept relies on. We offer a detailed study of the concept of failed states, show how various actors have started to circulate it, how actors transform because of their participation and investigate the persistent struggles to define and homogenize the concept. Hence, this is an article about the life of the failed state, the discipline of international relations and its relations to other actors, and an introduction of the actor-network theory toolbox to the sociology of international relations

Toward an Understanding of De Dicto Subjunctive Necessity

by Tristan Haze

Draft. Please send comments to tristanhaze at gmail dot com.

This is an early draft, and many of my current formulations are probably inadequate.

This paper is written... more This is an early draft, and many of my current formulations are probably inadequate.

This paper is written for a fairly specialized audience. I intend to give a more thorough and accessible treatment of these ideas in a projected book. Its working title is /Necessity and Conceptual Systems/.

The overall aim is to draw connections between modal concepts and broadly semantic concepts (the latter including the notion of a conceptual system). The basic idea is that necessarily true proposition are in some sense invariant through all configurations of the systems they belong to. (This is squared with the view that not all necessary truths can be known a priori by means of the notion of an empirically defeasible concept-formation.)

Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self

by Brian Taylor

When one does philosophy, one dismantles strings of concepts into their respective parts to examine both the parts... more When one does philosophy, one dismantles strings of concepts into their respective parts to examine both the parts themselves and the relationships the parts have with each other. This semantic reduction provides us the best possible opportunities for finding truth. This was exactly the type of skill Brian Taylor needed to write his new book Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self, postpaper publishing, ISBN: 978-0-557-99909-5 http://stores.lulu.com/postpaper

The book began as a series of blogged essays in a response to the “Authenticity” movement presented by the like of Eckhart Tolle, Andrew Cohen and to a lesser extent, Dr. Phil. These men, and others, were coming to conclusions on the idea of authenticity that were, among other things, subjective fallacies, rife with interpretation and possibly counterproductive. On the other side of the coin we had skeptical guru Michael Shermer or perhaps Richard Dawkins making up one half of the “four horseman of the non-apocalypse.” These men, “scientists,” were and still are guilty of the same faults as their spiritual counterparts, interpretations rather than knowledge. Brian Taylor wanted to know, “Are there any actual answers in the arena of the self and its power?” As it turns out, reality is far stranger than ever before known and we actually know so much less than we think we do, if it can be said that we know anything authentically, at all.

After four years of research into our ideas about the self through the ages, the sciences of the self and what the self is, this book comes to the conclusion that the modern self, you and I today, are not only manipulated, but that manipulation is sought out, required and pre-programmed. This is a book about how we are all being intentionally hyper-manipulated without our knowledge, by whom and to what end.

To “anti-social engineer” is to counter this phenomenon of modernity through critical consciousness, dubbed “assignee's prerogative.” This self direction is aimed toward eudaemonia, which is an Aristotelian idea roughly meaning “happiness and promotion,” and it is further suggested that virtue is found in the mean between excess and deficiency, in these concerns. This sounds rather simple in such a paragraph form, rest assured, chasing the meanings and relationships of these ideas to any philosophical depth requires a maze of rabbit holes and someone to guide you through them. Taylor is nothing if not thorough in this regard.

Entertaining, personal, conversational, exact and profound, this book has a strange undercurrent, almost a charge running through it. Most clearly defined in it's most opinionated moments, there is a subtext, not a call to arms but to a social contract. Taylor says, throughout the book, that it is specifically battling social engineering, the command, hidden or not, “think this about that.” Yet, he too wants us to think a certain way, a centrist “golden mean,” a path of no extremes. Making an argument against his ideas is difficult, regardless of the talking points he uses. (These vary from possible moral objections we may hold for prostitution or murder, to social norms such as supporting the troops or the war on terror.) In his most controversial moments, when objectivity is at its thinnest, the author's existentialism shines through and he suggests it's better to not claim to know something than to suspect something incorrectly. The exception to this rule is when the social engineering is secret, malicious, degenerative or merely in error.

There are things that we can do anti-social engineer our hyper-manipulated selves and Taylor spells these tasks out clearly. Firstly, social engineering, be it delivered by a television commercial, ideology, civility, social construct, etc. is to be expected and recognized. Then Taylor presents us his Philosophy Generator which is described as “a dismantling of paradigm” and a way to determine if any particular social engineering is more persuasive or manipulative. If we are able to first know what it is we are deciding, then do our best possible thinking on the matter, which is what working through the Generator is for, we should be able to be confident in our decision, whatever it may be. Furthermore, given the standardization of awareness, contemplation and centrist philosophy, it should be expected that the same benefit experienced by individuals would transfer to societies.

The book ends with a chapter called “God wears a yellow hat.” It is concluded with a list of 24 interesting intentions, (23 actually, one of them is missing,) this list is not meant to be a complete index of the topics discussed, but rather an indication of the book's scope. The war on terror, the war on drugs, food transportation, consumerism, capitalism, communism, false flags, dehumanization via technology, God, 2012, patriotism, culture, globalization, human rights and religion. There is an entire chapter devoted to a reasonable discussion between the two sides divided over the conspiracies associated with September 11, 2001. This book discusses conspiracy as it dismantles thought, which is a strange dichotomy. Taylor seems to want to convince us that he is a reasonable man, with a reasonable method and if such a man can find a reasonable conspiracy, we can take the suggestion from the fringe to the mainstream. He may be right. However, this is not a conspiracy book, this is a book about thinking.

One comes away from the experience of reading this book enticed to do more and this is the goal. Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self is about taking responsibility and looking ahead, prudently. It doesn't want to take anything away from you, you're entitled to have your beliefs as the author has his. We need our beliefs and we even need social engineering, these things are part of a natural, healthy species. The dangers of our beliefs are represented by the lack of awareness of them and the inability to think critically about them. Taylor argues that, if in fact we are not thinking well about the things we believe, we are not living up to the reasonable purpose we have as human beings. This appreciation of hyper-reality and our place in it defines our authenticity and is the promise expressed by the 21st Century Enlightenment.

Curricular reform and inquiry teaching in biology: where are our efforts most fruitfully invested?

by Briana Timmerman

Conceptual Structures and Processes In Creative Thought

by Jyotsna Vaid

How Does She Know? Re-visioning Conceptual Change from Feminist Research Perspectives

by Sonya N. Martin

Scantlebury, K. & Martin, S. (2010). How does she know? Re-envisioning conceptual change from feminist perspectives. In K. Tobin and M.-W. Roth (Eds) Re/structuring science education: Reuniting sociological and psychological perspectives (173-186). The Netherlands: Springer.

A feminist re-visioning of psychological and social perspectives on conceptions and conceptual change raises... more A feminist re-visioning of psychological and social perspectives on conceptions and conceptual change raises interesting issues and challenges. A psychological perspective to conceptual change proposes that learners develop a knowledge of the world through their experiences, yet feminist research in science education has shown how gendered those experiences can be. We take gender to be a social construction and other social categories such as race, ethnicity, class, religion and language also influence that construction. Building from the feminist slogan “the personal is political” we articulate in this chapter the research on gender issues in conceptual change and use feminist psychological and sociological theories to propose future directions for conceptual change research in science education.