Beyond romantic versus sceptic: a microanalysis of conceptual change in kinematics

Abstract

How should educators describe the goals they seek in student learning such that they can make sensible judgements about those students’ progress? In what terms may the comparison between students’ and scientists’ ideas be made? Answering these questions has been made difficult by the rather large literature on ‘misconceptions’ and ‘expert‐novice’ differences. These studies give a divergent account of students and scientists, and encourage a view of learning that requires processes of radical change ‐‐ conflicting, confronting, overcoming, replacing, eliminating, etc. ‐‐ rather than incremental growth. These metaphors portray students’ and scientists’ thinking as incomparable. Microanalysis of conceptual change can be a valuable tool for reconceptualizing the nature of students’ knowledge‐in‐develop‐ment and dissolving concept‐misconception and expert‐novice dichotomies. This case study suggests that students’ growing knowledge is distributed across different kinds of concepts, including registrations, qualitative cases and generative metaphors, and that this system only gradually comes to approximate canonical scientific knowledge. The conclusion points towards the possibility of comparative frameworks that describe target concepts accurately, but are nonetheless true to the dimensions of knowing, talking and acting present in students’ experience as they learn.