Teaching Science for Conceptual Change: Theory and Practice

Introduction This chapter contains two parts. In the first part, we discuss a range of theoretical perspectives giving rise to different notions of conceptual change and illustrate how researchers have conceptualized teaching and learning science from these different perspectives. In the second part, we report on studies about the awareness and implementation of these perspectives in regular science classes and document that there is still a large gap between what is known about effective teaching and learning science from conceptual change perspectives and the reality of instructional practice. Finally, we argue that more research is necessary on how teachers in regular classrooms can become more familiar with the key ideas of conceptual change.

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