ABSTRACT
Science education research is strongly characterized by its intense focus on students’ ideas or conceptions (Chang et al. 2010; Tsai and Wen 2005). The term ‘conceptions’ is the name given to students’ understanding of units of knowledge; ‘misconceptions’ or ‘alternative conceptions’ therefore represent erroneous or incomplete understanding (Liu 2001; Vosniadou
2008). These terms appear within a research agenda whose principal concern is with students’ evident failure to emerge from science instruction with a more sophisticated understanding of science (Shaffer and McDermott 2005). Current ‘conceptions research’ is driven primarily by relatively new tools that reveal student difficulties (Hake 1998). These tools have facilitated ongoing research that aims to improve the development and assessment of instructional practices to help students overcome these difficulties (e.g. Treagust 1988). Such is the perceived success of this programme that there exists in the science education field a conspicuous rejection of the necessity for conceptual frameworks (McDermott 1990). The unique culture and position of physics education researchers further encourages atheoretical research. They are often employed as part of physics faculties, are typically practising physicists (or have been), and are commonly working with students or educational issues within their institution. Inevitably, such research is not easily reinterpreted in different contexts. Reif (in Cummings 2013) argues that for real significant progress to occur, a coherent theoretical framework must be developed. diSessa et al. (2004) concur, arguing that even in the most dominant research concern, conceptual change, focused argumentation is limited. At the periphery of Physics Education Research (PER), a specialism within the broader science education field, there exists a small but influential group of researchers that insist that theoretical frameworks must be utilized if research is to be influential and constructive. The theoretical framework employed by this group is known as ‘the Resources Framework’. Advocates of this framework argue it is intended to specifically address persistent issues in science education research, particularly with respect to conceptions, and to provide a shared language through which disparate research findings may be grounded for greater explanatory power (Redish and Bing 2009; Sabella and Redish 2007). The relevant aspects of the Resources Framework are provided here as a way of exemplifying the need for a complementary approach (for a more comprehensive description, see Redish 2004). The Resources Framework has its foundations in a view of learning based on cognitive science, one concerned with the content and structure of cognitive networks in the student’s mind. The framework emerged from questions concerning whether students’ knowledge was ‘theory-like’ or ‘piece-like’. ‘Theory theorists’, such as Carey (1985) and Vosniadou (2002), believe students’ conceptions are concrete manifestations of theory-like cognitive structures. However, it is the ‘pieces’ view that has come to dominate PER and which forms the basis of the Resources Framework. In this view, conceptions are ‘nodes’ (or pieces) that are embedded within a larger structure or network which in turn is organized and affected by more global influences such as motivation and context (more pieces). Questions for research include the examination of the structure of this network, how such a structure might develop, how the various nodes of this structure are
activated and why, and how different contexts such as the subject studied, student background and motivational aspects affect the structure (e.g. diSessa 1993; Minstrell 2001; Sabella and Redish 2007). The Resources Framework focuses on describing a range of possibly meaningful units of knowledge where different units may be interesting or relevant for different reasons. Two such units include ‘facets’ and ‘p-prims’. Minstrell’s ‘facets’ (2001) are discrete and independent units said to characterize a student’s scientific repertoire. Such facets range from characterizing the ‘scientific method’ (e.g. experimenting is changing things and seeing what happens) to describing individual scientific ideas (e.g. heavier falls faster). The notion of facets allows for the identification of ideas in students’ ideas that are common amongst groups of learners and may affect understandings. Another unit is diSessa’s ‘phenomenological primitives’ or ‘p-prims’ (1993). These are characterized as pieces of knowledge in physics that students believe are an irreducible feature of reality, that is, requiring no further explanation. In general, p-prims are ‘concept groups’ that describe some aspect of a (supposed) physics mechanism. For example, if a student holds the p-prim ‘closer is stronger’, this could result in the mistaken belief that the Earth is closer to the sun in summer. Because ‘closer is stronger’ is both intuitive and true in other contexts, a justification is often not considered necessary, so the idea is quickly substantiated and subsequently difficult to alter. Although both ‘facets’ and ‘p-prims’ are theoretical constructs developed outside of the Resources Framework, Redish argues they are most useful when part of a subsuming structure and recontextualizes both as ‘resources’ within the Resources Framework. In this way, he describes ‘facets’ and ‘p-prims’ as serving different purposes, related or connected, and activated in certain contexts and at certain times. This need for a more encompassing theoretical structure arises from criticisms of cataloguing which continue to be charged at notions of ‘facets’, ‘p-prims’ and misconceptions in general, namely that these ideas are not fixed, discrete or easily characterized through labels but are instead manifold and extremely sensitive to context. Redish (2004) makes a further amendment to the notion of ‘p-prims’ within his Resources Framework by suggesting they have internal structures. He argues that a p-prim comprises a ‘reasoning primitive’ that is abstract and which ‘mapping’ relates to ‘facets’, that are concrete and describe specific phenomena. This distinction draws the discussion away from descriptive labels and categories to a slightly more subtle model that suggests one way physics knowledge works is by connecting the abstract to the concrete. These theoretical concepts have demonstrated utility within physics education research, raising the question for the Resources Framework of why stop at this characterization. That the level of abstractness (or concreteness) of ideas is significant suggests one could characterize the spectrum between these two extremes with a conceptualized organizing principle, rather than settle for two contestable, ambiguous and often
morally charged categories of ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’. Maton (2013, 2014b) highlights this issue when discussing ‘knowledge-blindness’. He explains that where knowledge as an object of study in its own right is seen by research (rather than reduced to knowing processes and mental states), as is the case in science and physics education, it is typically theorized in a highly segmented way as simple categories or constituent elements. Such a theorization reflects a vision of disciplines as simply an aggregation of concepts, relations and processes rather than a complex series of evolving constellations of meanings. As Poincaré stated, science is no more a collection of constituent parts than a pile of bricks is a house – it has an architecture based on organizing principles. From this perspective, it is apprenticeship into these organizing principles as much as specific atomic propositions that comprises the work of education. More widely, Maton (2014b) highlights how ‘knowledge-blindness’ is endemic to educational research. Psychologically-influenced approaches, such as those employed in PER, typically focus on students’ learning processes, while sociologically-influenced approaches typically foreground how students’ experiences are shaped by power relations (whether with the teacher or the environment). Both largely obscure the nature of what is being learned, as if knowledge itself was homogeneous and neutral. However, a rapidly growing range of studies are showing that different kinds of knowledge take various forms and have different effects.
