Resubsumption: A Possible Mechanism for Conceptual Change and Belief Revision

Successful learning sometimes requires that the learner abandons or rejects one or more prior concepts, beliefs, or intuitive theories. Such nonmonotonic changes are widely believed to have a low probability of occurring spontaneously and to be difficult to promote with instruction. A theory of nonmonotonic cognitive change should explain both why such changes are difficult and why they are possible. The purpose of this article is to develop the idea that nonmonotonic change happens when the learner resubsumes a domain of experience under a conceptual system originally developed for some other domain. The resubsumption theory is built on three main cognitive processes: In the course of routine knowledge formation, people grow informal theories for different domains of experience in parallel, maintaining local but not global coherence. The trigger for conceptual change is bisociation, the realization that an informal theory developed to make sense of one domain also applies to some other domain, giving the learner two alternative ways of thinking about the latter. The conflict between the two alternative ways of thinking is settled through competitive evaluation of their cognitive utility. The pedagogical implications of the resubsumption theory differ from those of prior theories but are as yet untested.     

Students’ Conceptions as Dynamically Emergent Structures

There is wide consensus that learning in science must be considered a process of conceptual change rather than simply information accrual. There are three perspectives on students’ conceptions and conceptual change in science that have significant presence in the science education literature: students’ ideas as misconceptions, as coherent systems of conceptual elements, and as fragmented knowledge elements. If misconceptions, systems of elements, or fragments are viewed implicitly as “regular things”, these perspectives are in opposition. However, from a complex dynamic systems perspective, in which students’ conceptions are viewed as dynamically emergent structures, the oppositions are lessened, and the integrated view has significant implications for theory and practice.     

Contrasting Ohlsson's Resubsumption Theory With Chi's Categorical Shift Theory

Ohlsson's proposal of resubsumption as the dominant process in conceptual, or nonmonotonic, change presents a worthy challenge to more established theories, such as Chi's theory of ontological shift. The two approaches differ primarily in that Ohlsson's theory emphasizes a process of learning in which narrower, more specific concepts are subsumed by more general, abstract categories through recognition of similarities, whereas Chi's theory emphasizes the dissociation of overly general categories through the recognition of differences. We examine the evidence for both theories and consider the educational implications of each. Overall, though subsumption almost certainly plays a role in nonmonotonic change, we maintain, on the basis of evidence from cognitive science and developmental psychology, that dissociation accounts for a greater portion of the re-representational processes underpinning changes in the structure of learner's knowledge.     

唯有确立“教师为要”方能落实“学生为本”——对我国大学教学理念嬗变的再思考

一百年前陶行知在南高师力主将“教授法”更名为“教学法”,看似一字之变,却彰显了教育哲学的天差地别。他的“教学合一”和“以学生为中心”思想,既脱胎于杜威的“儿童是太阳”和“新三中心论”,同时,也凸显了他对教育,特别是对大学教育问题与症结的深刻认识和犀利分析。时至今日,人们重温历史,仍然为其前卫、明晰的理念和深入浅出的阐释所深深折服。需要反思的是,对教育、教学本质内涵及要素互动的理解,是否仍有拓展的空间?对“教”与“学”角色互动和影响交互的认识,是否仍有深化可能?鉴于“以学生为中心”的提法易生歧义,“学生为本”更准确科学;而“学生为本”离不开“教师为要”;只有坚持“教师为要”,方能真正落实“学生为本”。笔者郑重建议:将“学生为本”与“教师为要”并提,作为现代大学办学的基本原则,它们如同鸟之两翼、车之两轮,互为犄角、互为表里,不可或缺也不可偏废!     

Students' Ideas about Reaction Rate and its Relationship with Concentration or Pressure

This cross‐sectional study identifies key conceptual difficulties experienced by upper secondary school and pre‐service chemistry teachers (N = 191) in the area of reaction rates. Students' ideas about reaction rates were elicited through a series of written tasks and individual interviews. In this paper, students' ideas related to reaction rate and its relationship with concentration or pressure are discussed. Evidence is presented to support the following claims. First, school students tended to use “macroscopic” modelling rather than using “particulate” and/or “mathematical” modelling. By contrast, undergraduates were more likely to provide explanations based upon theoretical models and entities within established chemical ideas. Nevertheless, second, they had conceptual difficulties in making transformation within and across different theoretical models. Finally, students did not generally use a scientifically acceptable concept of reaction rate across contexts. Although an acceptable concept may have been used in one context, incorrect ideas may, nonetheless, have been used in other contexts. However, undergraduates' responses were less affected by context. Several conceptual difficulties exhibited by school students persisted among undergraduates. Some possible implications for planning the curriculum and teaching are proposed in the light of the results.     

Conventional Thought and Practice in Physical Education: Problems of Teaching and Implications for Change

Viewed in the light of benchmarks for professional quality, the generally weak commitment to teaching clearly becomes the main problem with current physical education. The ideological legacy of the profession—the two conventional ideas of “physical education as training of the physical” and “physical education as education through the physical”—is a main cause of confusion as well as the source for the growing lack of public support for physical education as an integral school subject. This paper looks at the theory of the self-reproducing failing of physical education as an hypothesis to explain this continuing plummet of physical education. Prospects for change are dependent on (a) creating conceptual clarity and cohesiveness among physical education teacher educators, (b) recruiting carefully, (c) maintaining “learning to reflect” as the leitmotiv of the teacher education program, and (d) developing an agreement of concepts among student teaching supervisors.     

Supporting teacher responsiveness in assessment for learning through disciplined noticing

Abstract

Assessment for learning (AfL) practices are commonly recommended as effective classroom strategies for providing teachers with information about student understanding. For teachers, the substantive potential of these AfL practices to inform student learning actions depends on what teachers notice and select as a focus and how they interpret and act on the information they have. This paper suggests research on teacher professional noticing has something to offer in understanding how teacher AfL attention and actions are framed in the moment. It explains noticing as a responsive act that invites action that is an inclusive, dynamic and purposeful response to evidence of student ideas. Noticing is what enables a teacher to act on the fly because it informs and underpins possible actions. Three frames of noticing are introduced to guide noticing and action – curriculum connoisseurship, cultural and community connectedness, and collaborative ways of working. Through consideration of classroom events using these frames, teachers become better prepared to choose to respond in the moment creatively. The three frames provide teachers and researchers with a conceptual language to articulate and sharpen their AfL practices as part of a flexible and rigorous responsiveness to their students’ learning.     

Knowledge Restructuring in the Development of Children’s Cosmologies

The development of children’s cosmologies was investigated over a 13‐year period, using multi‐modal, in‐depth interviews with 686 children (217 boys, 227 girls from New Zealand and 129 boys, 113 girls from China), aged 2–18. Children were interviewed while they observed the apparent motion of the Sun and Moon, and other features of the Earth; drew their ideas of the shape and motion of the Earth, Moon and Sun, and the causes of daytime and night‐time; then modelled them using play‐dough; which led into discussion of related ideas. These interviews revealed that children’s cosmologies were far richer than previously thought and surprisingly similar in developmental trends across the two cultures. There was persuasive evidence of three types of conceptual change: a long‐term process (over years) similar to weak restructuring; a medium‐term process (over months) akin to radical restructuring; and a dynamic form of conceptual crystallisation (often in seconds) whereby previously unconnected/conflicting concepts gel to bring new meaning to previously isolated ideas. The interview technique enabled the researchers to ascertain children’s concepts from intuitive, cultural, and scientific levels. The evidence supports the argument that children have coherent cosmologies that they actively create to make sense of the world rather than fragmented, incoherent “knowledge‐in‐pieces”.     

The design of a mathematics course. A theoretical reflection

Realistic Mathematics Education has its conceptual framework, that is a theory. This theory evolved from development and research in mathematics education. A course on fractions and many other examples will be analysed in depth with the realistic theory in the background. The leading question will be: “What strategies did the designers of the exemplary educational material use?” Revealing those strategies and making the user conscious of them enables the user to apply them henceforth as tactics for the design in advance. In consequence an important theoretical change of perspective looms ahead. Where the theory was first anafter-image, it can now act as apre-image, i.e. as amodel for realistic mathematics education in advance. This is because the tools to farm the theoretical field have been revealed. The question ofhow to apply the theory has been answered. Freudenthal's ideas provided for a considerable part of the means to make this theoretical step forward.     

A critique of neo-Hahnian outdoor education theory. Part one: Challenges to the concept of “character building”

Abstract

Within the diverse and sometimes amorphous outdoor education literature, “neo-Hahnian” (NH) approaches to adventure education are exceptional for their persistence, seeming coherence, and wide acceptance. NH approaches assume that adventure experiences “build character”, or, in modern terminology, “develop persons”, “actualise selves”, or have certain therapeutic effects associated with personal traits. In social psychological terms NH thought is “dispositional”, in that it favours explanations of behaviour in terms of consistent personal traits. In this paper I critically review NH OAE in an historical context, and draw on Ross' and Nisbett's (1991) seminal review of dispositional social psychology to argue that OAE programs do not build character, but may provide situations that elicit certain behaviours. For OAE research and theory, belief in the possibility of “character building” must be seen as a source of bias, not as a foundation. The conceptual analysis I develop provides not only a basis for critique, but also offers a way forward for OAE.     

Change or Durability? The Contribution of Metaconceptual Awareness in Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Learning of Science Concepts

This longitudinal study examined the role of metaconceptual awareness in the change and the durability of preservice teachers’ conceptual understandings over the course of several months. Sixteen preservice early childhood teachers participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to reveal the participants’ conceptual understandings of lunar phases (pre, post, and delayed-post) and level of metaconceptual awareness (delayed-post only). Based on the change and stability in participants’ conceptual understandings from pre to post and from post to delayed-post interviews, participants’ conceptual understandings were assigned into three groups that described the profile of their long-term conceptual understandings: “decay or stability”, “continuous growth”, and “growth and stability”. The results indicated that participants in the “continuous growth” and “growth and stability” groups had significantly higher metaconceptual awareness scores than participants in the “decay or stability” group. The results provided evidence that metaconceptual awareness plays a more decisive role in the restructuring of conceptual understandings than the durability of conceptual understandings.     

Race and Genetics from a Modal Materialist Perspective

Prevailing idealist and materialist theories of rhetoric fail to account for the continual circulation and recirculation of “racism” as a scientific discourse. An alternative theory of modal materialism addresses this problem by suggesting that the properties of all being are constituted through three distinguishable forms of matter that include the “physical,” the “biological,” and the “symbolic.” A sufficiently lush and nimble conceptualization of human action requires consideration of the interaction of all three modes in theory and in practice. The theory of modal materialism is illustrated through a consideration of the discourse of race and genetics as it was recirculated and modified in 2005 and 2006 by publications in the journal Science, and which were amplified for a larger reading public through circulation in the New York Times.     

CREATIVE PROCESSES IN SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

At present, computational models of scientific discovery and theory formation play a prominent role in illuminating transformations of rational conceptual systems. A new abstraction paradigm aimed at unifying the different perspectives and providing insight for future ones is proposed here. The aim is to emphasize the significance of “abduction” in order to propose a unified epistemological model of scientific discovery. This model first describes four meanings of the word abduction (creative, selective, visual, inference to the best explanation) in order to clarify their significance in epistemology and “Artificial Intelligence” (AI). Among the different abductive roles played by various kinds of conceptual transformations in developing scientific creative reasoning–such as radical ontological change, conceptual combination, analogical and visual thinking, anomaly resolution, thought experiment — visual mental imagery in thinking may be relevant to “scientific” hypothesis generation.     

B Is For Burqa,C Is For Censorship: The Miseducative Effects of Censoring Muslim Girls and Women's Sartorial Discourse

In this article, I add a discursive analysis to the discussion about Muslim girls and women's dress in non-Muslim educational contexts. I argue that a law or policy that prohibits the wearing of khimar, burqa, chador, niqab, hijab, or jilbab in the context of public schools is a form of censorship in educational contexts. This sartorial censorship is miseducative in the sense that it impedes the achievement of important educational goals, especially in public education. I consider the public nature of public education and discuss three sets of miseducative effects: First, the examination of discursive processes, including the production of social norms, is limited. Second, the critical uptake of the banned discourse by female Muslim students themselves is foreclosed, and their agency hindered. Third, a metadiscourse arises that translates individual sartorial discursive acts into generalized terms (such as “veils” and “headscarves”) without noticing what is lost in translation.     

Conceptual change strategies and cooperative group work in chemistry

This study conducted at a suburban community college tested a method of conceptual change in which treatment students worked in small cooperative groups on tasks aimed at eliciting their misconceptions so that they could then be discussed in contrast to the scientific conceptions that had been taught in direct instruction. Categorizations of student understanding of the target concepts of the laws of conservation of matter and energy and aspects of the particulate nature of gases, liquids, and solids were ascertained by pre- and posttesting. Audiotapes of student verbal interaction in the small groups provided quantitative and qualitative data concerning student engagement in behaviors suggestive of the conditions posited to be part of the conceptual change process (Posner, Strike, Hewson & Gertzog, 1982). Chi-square analysis of posttests indicated that students in treatment groups had significantly lower (p < 0.05) proportion of misconceptions than control students on four of the five target concepts. Students who exhibited no change in concept state had a higher frequency of verbal behaviors suggestive of “impeding” conceptual change when compared to students who did change. Three factors emerged from qualitative analysis of group interaction that appeared to influence learning: (a) many students had flawed understanding of concepts that supported the target concepts; (b) student views towards learning science affected their engagement in assigned tasks, (c) “good” and “poor” group leaders had a strong influence on group success.     

A study of practical‐moral knowledge in science teaching: Case studies in physical science classrooms

This study further extends a conceptual framework that explores science teaching as a “practice” not reducible to the application of formal knowledge, but as informed by teachers' practical‐moral knowledge. A hermeneutic model was developed to examine practical‐moral knowledge indirectly by investigating teachers' commitments, interpretations, actions, and dialectic interactions between them. The study also aimed to analyze teachers' actions in terms of their interpretations and commitments as they realize “internal goods” of their practice. Ethnographic case studies of three science teachers were conducted through classroom observation, in‐depth interviews and dialogues, and artifact analysis. A commitment of preparing students for national exams was common to the three teachers but was manifested differently in classroom practices. This commitment originated from interpretations about the duty of “good” teachers not letting students and schools down. Other emergent commitments were commitments: to conceptual understandings, to “challenge” learners, and to social modeling. We present each with associated interpretations and actions. The concepts of practical wisdom (phronesis) and gap closing are used to characterize teachers' practical knowledge and its development respectively. Implications for teacher education are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 929–951, 2010     

Reforming Science Education: Part II. Utilizing Kieran Egan’s Educational Metatheory

This paper is the second of two parts and continues the conversation which had called for a shift in the conceptual focus of science education towards philosophy of education, with the requirement to develop a discipline-specific “philosophy” of science education. In Part I, conflicting conceptions of science literacy were identified with disparate “visions” tied to competing research programs as well as school-based curricular paradigms. The impasse in the goals of science education and thereto, the contending views of science literacy, were themselves associated with three underlying fundamental aims of education (knowledge-itself; personal development; socialization) which, it was argued, usually undercut the potential of each other. During periods of “crisis-talk” and throughout science educational history these three aims have repeatedly attempted to assert themselves. The inability of science education research to affect long-term change in classrooms was correlated not only to the failure to reach a consensus on the aims (due to competing programs and to the educational ideologies of their social groups), but especially to the failure of developing true educational theories (largely neglected since Hirst). Such theories, especially metatheories, could serve to reinforce science education’s growing sense of academic autonomy and independence from socio-economic demands. In Part II, I offer as a suggestion Egan’s cultural-linguistic theory as a metatheory to help resolve the impasse. I hope to make reformers familiar with his important ideas in general, and more specifically, to show how they can complement HPS rationales and reinforce the work of those researchers who have emphasized the value of narrative in learning science.     

Socially constructed readiness for school

Educational researchers, early childhood educators, and parents often think of readiness for school as a measurable child characteristic. This ignores the social process by which readiness is used to group, rank, and compare children and the variability in the term's use from community to community. This study proposes that readiness for school should be conceived as being “socially constructed.” Using a conceptual framework based on Vygotskian theory and cultural anthropology, we develop the concept of “activity setting” as a social process in which cognitive processes and meaning structures develop. The emerging meaning of readiness is examined by using an activity‐setting analysis in three different communities and kindergarten settings.     

Community and the myth of the ideal school: Circulation and appropriation of the Hamburg Gemeinschaftsschulen in Spain (1922–1933)

The progressive education movement was known in Spain from its very inception, and in fact many of its pedagogical theories and practices reached Spain before reaching other European countries. Yet traditional historiography has always maintained that Spain was never integrated in the progressive education movement, a misconception that helps explain the lack of research in the field. Recent historiographical research, however, has shown that numerous Spanish schools served as laboratories for the implementation of progressive education methods in the 1920s and 1930s. The Spanish educational system proved itself to be especially open to international innovation in general and Spain actually enjoyed a privileged position for the study of how innovative pedagogical ideas could be incorporated and appropriated. Proof of this affirmation can be found in the introduction and dissemination throughout Spain of the experimental public school movement of Hamburg known as Gemeinschaftsschulen.

This article will focus on the way this movement was received in Spain. We will examine the phenomenon from a double perspective, corresponding to the different positions that scholars found themselves in within the educational panorama of the time. On the one hand we will examine the role of the “grass-roots” educators who wished to change schools “from below”, starting with classroom practices. On the other hand we will take a look at the representatives of “high pedagogy”, who were intent on formulating a pedagogical theory on which to base a political–ideological model that would serve to change the school “from above”. Tensions arising among the different pedagogical groups, along with the ambiguity of the translation into Spanish of the term Gemeinschaftsschulen, led to the different groups appropriating the concept in different ways. The evolution of the term Gemeinschaftsschulen, from its original identification with a localised school experiment in Hamburg to its becoming a symbol for virtually all European school vanguards, will be addressed at the conclusion of the article.     

Challenging Students’ Intuitions—the Influence of a Tangible Model of Virus Assembly on Students’ Conceptual Reasoning About the Process of Self-Assembly

A well-ordered biological complex can be formed by the random motion of its components, i.e. self-assemble. This is a concept that incorporates issues that may contradict students’ everyday experiences and intuitions. In previous studies, we have shown that a tangible model of virus self-assembly, used in a group exercise, helps students to grasp the process of self-assembly and in particular the facet “random molecular collision”. The present study investigates how and why the model and the group exercise facilitate students’ learning of this particular facet. The data analysed consist of audio recordings of six group exercises (n?=?35 university students) and individual semi-structured interviews (n?=?5 university students). The analysis is based on constructivist perspectives of learning, a combination of conceptual change theory and learning with external representations. Qualitative analysis indicates that perceived counterintuitive aspects of the process created a cognitive conflict within learners. The tangible model used in the group exercises facilitated a conceptual change in their understanding of the process. In particular, the tangible model appeared to provide cues and possible explanations and functioned as an “eye-opener” and a “thinking tool”. Lastly, the results show signs of emotions also being important elements for successful accommodation.