ABSTRACT
In the 1970s, something remarkable happened in research in science education. For decades the dominant form of research had been the experiment, in which different forms of instruction were compared in effect on performance on a test. Quite suddenly, however, apparently independently in a wide spread of countries, instead of doing comparative experiments, researchers began to probe children’s understanding of natural phenomena such as the shape of the Earth, drying of clothes, fl oating and sinking, and so on. They reported surprising results, with children and even older students offering explanations that differed from scientists’, even after they had been taught the scientists’ depiction in school. It was not only remarkable that researchers began to do this new type of study, but also that major journals accepted reports of them and that other scholars and, eventually, teachers took notice of them. Through the 1980s, uncovering alternative conceptions became the most prominent line in research. This led to considerations of how conceptions form, how amenable they are to change, and what this means for teaching.
