Alternative constructs and cognitive development: Commonalities, divergences, and possibilities for evidence

Abstract

The last fifteen years of research in science education has seen the emergence, flowering, proliferation, and now perhaps slight wilting of studies of pupils' alternative constructs. Meanwhile the older, broadly Piagetian, tradition of work rooted in notions of cognitive development was attacked as being, inter alia, deterministic, concentrating on what children could not do, and getting even that wrong since children could be shown to be a lot cleverer than the cognitive developmentalists claimed. The time has perhaps now come to look at these two lines of work together to see what assumptions they share and where their paradigms, aims, and methods differ significantly. In this paper I will claim that there is far less antagonism between the two traditions than is often represented, but that nevertheless the differences are fundamental and lead to different views of the purposes and potential of science education. Possible evidence that might be adduced in support of one view at the expense of the other will be considered and exemplified with recent results of a cognitive acceleration project.