My initial ideas on conceptual change revolved around student conceptual change of science content. Reading the articles by Duit, Tyson, and, Posner got me to think about the ontological and social/affective nature of conceptual change as well. Both Duit and Tyson elaborate on the progression of conceptual change being content oriented to multidimensional. Though both present a lack of evidence for how social/affective domains affect conceptual change, it was helpful to read about how they consider these areas to also play an important role in student conceptual change. I have been wondering lately how do students’ attitudes, beliefs, culture, school culture, etc. effect how individuals are subject to conceptual change and hope to do some additional readings in this area.
Also, my on previous conceptions of conceptual change (haha) were that students’ initial conceptions were simply replaced or expanded upon in light of the inapplicability of original beliefs. All four of the readings highlight upon the evidence that original conceptions are never really lost, but often reoccur in changing contexts or over time.
Tyson writes “Creating links is an important feature of conceptual change theory, otherwise there is no difference between conceptual change and simple rote learning.” This statement allows for multiple types of learning including some aspects of Behaviorism, though not all types of learning are useful in every situation. In Duit’s article a paragraph is devoted to additional authors’ findings that the “impetus for change being within the learner’s control” and “The notion of intentional conceptual change is in some ways analogous to that of mindfulness, a ‘construct which reflects a voluntary state of mind, and connects among motivations, cognition, and learning.'” From my own experience, I cannot comment on how much of my own conceptual change was a “voluntary state of mind,” but I do agree that the process of conceptual change cannot be brought about solely by the teacher. The learner is ultimately the at the crux of conceptual change.
Lastly, conceptual change seems to be at the forefront of theoretical frameworks in science education. I know this is a theory course but I was a bit disappointed to see that only the Posner article made recommendations on how to incorporate conceptual change into the classroom (though both Duit and Tyson admitted the importance of incorporating the theory into practice). As I read these articles, I am constantly thinking about my teaching of SCIED 497F (basically science and engineering concepts for elementary education majors) and I am wondering how much of the course elements we specifically design for conceptual change (such as beginning ideas, reflection, claims and evidence, opportunities for argumentation, etc.) are actually leading to their own conceptual changes or ultimately to their use of a conceptual change framework in their own teaching.
Tags: conceptual change
I also think that it was nice that articles considered affective and social domains affecting the students’ conceptual change process. However, as you mentioned they didn’t provide clear evidences about them.
I think this incorporating theory into our practices is what we are looking for as we read the articles. we would be more happy to see how we can use these theories in our teachings. As Mark mentioned may be we need to look at the references or ask Scott.
The fact that the articles had almost no recommendations on how to incorporate conceptual change into the classroom slightly disappointed me too. I think it can be a challenge to decide upon the worth of a theory without seeing practical implications. I was thinking that to find this, we would need to go through some of their references.