ABSTRACT
At its core, conceptual change theory is concerned with how learners change their ideas or knowledge. Conceptual change occurs when learners change their understanding of the concepts they use and the conceptual frameworks that encompass them. Theories from different disciplines including cognitive psychology (Carey, 1988; Chi, 1992; Smith, di Sessa, & Roschelle, 1993; Thagard, 1992), social psychology (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Tesser & Shaffer, 1990), and science education (Chinn & Brewer, 1993; Strike & Posner, 1992; Vosniadou, 2002) have investigated various aspects of conceptual change including the conditions that foster change, the sources of influence on this change, the longevity and strength of the change, and the facilitation of changes (Dole & Sinatra, 1998). This research has been delineated in many different ways, but two particular demarcations are productive when considering conceptual change in student-centered learning environments (SCLEs). The first is the differences between theories that support an evolutionary conceptual change perspective (e.g., Smith et al., 1993; Strike & Posner, 1992; Vosniadou, 1992) and others that take a more radical conceptual change approach (e.g., Chi, 1992; Chinn & Brewer, 1993), and the second is the “warming trend” (see Sinatra, 2005) that has more recently occurred in the conceptual change literature. After discussing these distinctions, we then describe different SCLEs that can foster primarily radical conceptual change and note how this conceptual change is warmer in some learning environments than others.
