Learning to use scientific concepts

In responding to the research on conceptual change, this article attempts to make two points. First, scientific concepts are not possessed by individuals; rather, they are part of a culture’s resources, which individuals learn to use for their own or for group purposes. Second, particular concepts are most effectively mastered when the learner is deeply engaged in solving a problem for which they function as effective semiotic tools in achieving a solution. On these grounds, it is argued that the mastering of scientific concepts is best achieved through learning to use them in motivated inquiry.

Gordon WellsEmail:

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Gordon Wells   is a professor of education at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he teaches and researches in the fields of sociocultural theory, inquiry-oriented curriculum, language and literacy development, and classroom discourse. Before emigrating from England in 1984, he directed the Bristol Study of Language Development (The Meaning Makers, Heinemann 1986); while at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, he engaged in collaborative action research with K-8 teachers (Action, Talk and Text, Teachers College Press 2001). Recent publications include articles in Human Development, Journal of the Learning Sciences and Mind, Culture, and Activity, and two books, Dialogic Inquiry (Cambridge University Press 1999) and Learning for Life in the 21st Century: Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education (Blackwell 2002).