ABSTRACT
The central principle of conceptual change research is the constructivist idea that “old” ideas (or mental structures) are infl uential in supporting or constraining learning (or development). In classroom-relevant study, conceptual change research has laid blame for diffi culties in learning at the feet of “entrenched naïve ideas,” or, at least, prior ideas that are for various reasons radically different from normative understanding in domains like physics and biology. In physics, naïve ideas said to be like the medieval “impetus theory” of motion must give way to counter-intuitive Newtonian ideas (McCloskey, 1983). Similarly, developmental studies seek to fi nd the great intellectual accomplishments of childhood in dramatic revisions in the way domains are construed. Carey (1985) talked about a shift from a psychological view of the world of biology to a true “mechanistic” biology. Hatano (Inagaki & Hatano, 2002) argued that there is an earlier phase of distinctly biological thinking, called “vitalistic,” whose characteristics are, while not psychological, still far from adult biological conceptualization.
