The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences: A History of Conceptual Change Research

By Andrea A. diSessa. 2005

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Author(s): diSessa, AA | Abstract: © Cambridge University Press 2006, 2014. Some topics seem systematically extremely difficult for students, and conventional methods of teaching usually fail. Topics like this are found at all age levels, including, in physics; matter and density, Newtonian mechanics, electricity, and relativity; in biology: Evolution and genetics. These topics are difficult to learn, because learning them requires students to undergo a conceptual change. Conceptual change contrasts with less problematic learning, such as skill acquisition (learning a physical skill or an algorithm for long division) and acquisition of facts (such as "basic number facts" for addition or multiplication). If there are difficulties in these areas, they are for more apparent reasons such as sheer mass of learning or the necessity of practice to produce quick, error-free performance. The name "conceptual change" embodies a first approximation of the primary difficulty: Students must build new ideas in the context of old ones, hence the emphasis on "change" rather than on simple accumulation or (tabula rasa, or "blank slate") acquisition. Evidence strongly suggests that prior ideas constrain learning in many areas. The "conceptual" part of the conceptual change label must be treated less literally. Various theories locate the difficulty in such entities as "beliefs," "theories," or "ontologies," in addition to "concepts."

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/38d11ac3f46343cbb7bf2fe972fb4707e32a3f2b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Michael Schneider
2. Roland H. Grabner
3. Jennifer Paetsch

In Education

1. Michael Schneider
2. Roland H. Grabner
3. Jennifer Paetsch
4. Robert S. Siegler
5. D. Hurrell

Citations in the corpus

• Mental number line, number line estimation, and mathematical achievement : Their interrelations in grades 5 and 6 (2009, background): “Currently a lot more is known about the facilitation of conceptual change in the domain of science learning than in mathematics learning (diSessa, 2006).”