Framework for Conceptual Change

Abstract

Students often enter introductory courses lacking a consistent conceptual framework about natural sciences, and after traditional instruction, many experience little change in conceptual understanding. This article analyzes the nature and origin of misconceptions and discusses how they are formed and where they come from. It explains why it is so difficult to change students’ concepts. This article also reviews Posner et al.’s (1982) conceptual change model and elaborates how and under what conditions it can be employed to modify students’ preexisting concepts. Various challenges of that conceptual change model are discussed. How to teach to provoke conceptual change is discussed in a further paper.