ABSTRACT
In conceptual change research dating back to Piaget (2007; Piaget & Inhelder, 2000), explaining observed or hypothetical phenomena of everyday and/or scientific relevance has been the prototypical cognitive activity in which participants engage. Related activities are common, such as predicting which phenomenon will occur in a given situation (in the context of chemistry, see Mulford & Robinson, 2002) or identifying whether a phenomenon is of a particular class (in the context of physics, see Ioannides & Vosniadou, 2002). However, investigating participants’ explanatory narratives of various phenomena remains a primary focus in the field.
