Conceptual change - A powerful framework for improving science teaching and learning
Reinders Duit
IPN – Leibniz Institute for Science Education at the University of Kiel, Germany
duit@ipn.uni-kiel.de
David F Treagust
Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
D.Treagust@smec.curtin.edu.au
Introduction
In 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.
1. Development of the notion of conceptual change
Historical developments
Research 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,
constructivist ideas developed by merging various cognitive approaches with a focus on viewing
knowledge as being constructed such as with the Piagetian interplay of assimilation and
accommodation, Kuhnian ideas of theory change in the history of science and the radical
constructivist ideas of people like von Glasersfeld (1989). However, certain limitations of the
constructivist ideas of the 1980s and early 1990s led to their merger with social constructivist
and social cultural orientations that more recently resulted in recommendations to employ
multi-perspective epistemological frameworks in order to adequately address the complex
process of learning (Duit & Treagust, 1998).
Recent studies in an edited volume by Sinatra and Pintrich (2002) emphasise the importance
of the learner, suggesting that the learner can play an active intentional role in the process of
knowledge restructuring. While acknowledging the important contributions to the study
conceptual change from the perspectives of science education and cognitive developmental
psychology, Sinatra and Pintrich note that the psychological and educational literature of the
1980s and 1990s placed greater emphasis on the role of the learner in the learning process. (Note
1) It is this emphasis on the impetus for change being within the learner’s control that forms the
basis of the chapters in the text. The notion of intentional conceptual change is in some ways
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 change
Research 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
describe similar learning. The most common analysis is that there are two types of conceptual
change, variously called weak knowledge restructuring, assimilation or conceptual capture and
strong/radical knowledge restructuring, accommodation or conceptual exchange. Some authors
separate knowledge accretion from conceptual change while others include it as a third level.
Various author's positions on these contrasting forms of conceptual change have been
summarised by Harrison and Treagust (2000).
Consequently, because the term conceptual change has been given various meanings in the
literature, the term change often has been misunderstood as being an exchange of
pre-instructional conceptions for the science concepts. In this review, we do not use conceptual
change in this way. Rather, we use the term conceptual change for learning in such domains
where the pre-instructional conceptual structures of the learners have to be fundamentally
restructured in order to allow understanding of the intended knowledge, that is, the acquisition of
science concepts. In a general sense, conceptual change denotes learning pathways from students'
pre-instructional conceptions to the science concepts to be learned (Duit, 1999).
Conceptual change has become the term denoting learning science from constructivist
perspectives (Duit, 1999) and has been employed in studies on learning and instruction in a
number of domains other than science (Guzetti & Hynd, 1998; Mason, 2001; Schnotz,
Vosniadou, & Carretero, 1999; Vosniadou, 1994). An analysis of these studies on conceptual
change shows that they primarily take an epistemological, an ontological or a social/affective
position, with most studies adopting an epistemological position. As noted in this review, there
are clear limitations to taking a single position to understand conceptual change.
An epistemological position
The classical conceptual change approach involved the teacher making students’ alternative
frameworks explicit prior to designing a teaching approach consisting of ideas that do not fit the
students’ existing ideas and thereby promoting dissatisfaction. A new framework is then
introduced based on formal science that will explain the anomaly. However, it became obvious
that students' conceptual progress towards understanding and learning science concepts and
principles after instruction quite frequently turned out to be still limited (Duit & Treagust, 1998).
There appears to be no study which found that a particular student's conception could be
completely extinguished and then replaced by the science view. Indeed, most studies show that
the old ideas stay alive in particular contexts. Usually the best that could be achieved was a
'peripheral conceptual change' (Chinn & Brewer, 1993) in that parts of the initial idea merge with
parts of the new idea to form some sort of hybrid idea (Jung 1993).
The best known conceptual change model in science education, based on students’
epistemologies, originated with Posner, Strike, Hewson and Gertzog (1982) and was refined by
Hewson (1981, 1982, 1985, 1996), Hewson and Hewson (1984; 1988; 1992), Strike and Posner
(1985, 1992) and applied to classroom instruction by Hennessey (1993). In the conceptual
change model, student dissatisfaction with a prior conception was believed to initiate dramatic or
revolutionary conceptual change and was embedded in radical constructivist epistemological
views with an emphasis on the individual’s conceptions and his/her conceptual development. If
the learner was dissatisfied with his/her prior conception and an available replacement
conception was intelligible, plausible and/or fruitful, accommodation of the new conception may
follow. An intelligible conception is sensible if it is non-contradictory and its meaning is
understood by the student; plausible means that in addition to the student knowing what the
conception means, he/she finds the conception believable; and, the conception is fruitful if it
helps the learner solve other problems or suggests new research directions. Posner et al. insist
that a plausible conception must first be intelligible and a fruitful conception must be intelligible
and plausible. Resultant conceptual changes may be permanent, temporary or too tenuous to
detect.
In this learning model, resolution of conceptual competition is explained in terms of the
comparative intelligibility, plausibility and fruitfulness of rival conceptions. Posner et al.
claimed that a collection of epistemological commitments called the student's 'conceptual
ecology' (Toulmin, 1972) mediated conceptual intelligibility, plausibility and fruitfulness. Strike
and Posner (1992, pp. 216-217) expanded the conceptual ecology metaphor to include
anomalies, analogies and metaphors, exemplars and images, past experiences, epistemological
commitments, metaphysical beliefs and knowledge in other fields. The conceptual change
model’s use of constructs such as conceptual ecology, assimilation and accommodation suggests
a constructivist notion built on Piagetian ideas. These conceptual change approaches have proven
superior to more traditionally-oriented approaches in a number of studies.
However, a summarizing meta-analysis of the large number of studies available is still
missing. A decade ago, Guzetti, Snyder, Glass and Gamas (1993) did provide such a
meta-analysis but they only included studies that employed a treatment-control group design. At
around the same time, Wandersee, Mintzes and Novak (1994) summarized their extensive
analysis of conceptual change approaches with a cautious remark that their analysis gave the
impression that conceptual change approaches usually are more successful than traditional
approaches in guiding students to the science concepts. However, a problem with research on
conceptual change is that it is rather difficult to compare the success of conceptual change
approaches and other approaches. Usually different approaches to teaching and learning address
different aims and hence it is only possible to evaluate whether the particular aims set have been
adequately met.
Limits of the "classical" conceptual change approaches
As argued above, research has revealed that the conceptual change approaches of the 1980s
and the early 1990s are not necessarily superior to more traditional approaches of teaching and
learning science. These approaches are also limited in a number of other respects, the most
important of which seem to be as follows.
First, conceptual change primarily has denoted changes of science concepts and principles,
that is, cognitive development on the science content level. Often it has been overlooked that
these changes usually are closely linked to changes of views of the underlying concepts and
principles of the nature of science. The research has not been taken into consideration that