ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies three broad classes of models that have informed research on the interaction among metacognition, epistemic thinking, and conceptual change: metacognitive models, situated and distributed models, and content-specific models of long-term learning progressions. It then discusses the ways these models are complementary and converge. One convergence is the recognition that some aspects of epistemic thinking may be implicit, non-symbolic, and experiential, while others are explicit, symbolically represented, and socially shared. A second is the recognition that increasing students’ metacognitive awareness of epistemic thinking and making this thinking explicit is important in promoting conceptual change.
