Chapter 15: How Do Students’ Concepts Develop?
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Published:29 Apr 2019
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Special Collection: 2019 ebook collection
The Nature of the Chemical Concept: Re-constructing Chemical Knowledge in Teaching and Learning, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019, ch. 15, pp. 313-337.
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This chapter draws upon the metaphor of conceptual change taking place within the ecology of a learner's mind, an ecology that reflects that learner's epistemological sophistication (e.g., how a student understands the status of models) as well as the repertoire of available concepts and their specific content. As concepts are highly networked, any conceptual change has potential to widely perturb the system. However, some conceptual change can be considered as effectively the discrete addition of new content; some can be seen as involving minor, effectively local, amendments to existing content; whilst some requires more extensive restructuring of conceptual frameworks. The chapter discusses some hypothetical examples, as well as drawing upon cases from research studies. Given the complexity of learners’ conceptual systems, teachers cannot realistically be expected to engineer conceptual change simply through designing and enacting well-considered presentations of the concepts of chemistry, even when informed by reported studies of student alternative conceptions. Rather, teaching is an ongoing and interactive process of encouraging shifts within learners’ diverse, and actively developing, conceptual ecologies.