ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how conceptual change has been investigated in learners across a range of disciplinary domains and in the history and philosophy of science. It deals with foundational issues of concept representation and the processes of change. The book then considers external representations such as language, visual representations and simulations, equations, and gesture and how these interact with internal mental representations such as imagery, image schemas, mental models, and the essentialist assumption. It also explores learners' ideas about and implicit orientations to, the nature of knowledge, understanding, and learning. The book examines how these ideas and orientations affect conceptual change in specific domains of knowledge as well as their ability to engage in the reasoning and epistemic practices needed to construct more sophisticated understanding of the technical concepts.
