Readers, Texts and Conceptual Change Learning

The purpose of this paper is to examine reader and text variables related to conceptual change learning from science textbooks. I do this by reviewing a program of research I conducted over the last decade. This research, along with related studies conducted by others, showed that it is difficult to change readers prior knowledge from reading texts that are inconsistent with that knowledge. Students can be taught, however, to monitor changes in their thinking about scientific conceptions. Such a strategy appears to help students develop scientific conceptions. One particular kind of text variable also appears to be successful in changing students' prior knowledge. Refutation text, in which students' naive conceptions are directly stated and then refuted, was shown to impact students' prior knowledge when that knowledge contained naive scientific conceptions. The paper reports details of those studies and then discusses additional insights about the change process gleaned from the social psychological literature. Together, the cognitive and social psychology literature points to several useful educational implications for teachers who may need to teach for conceptual change.