Theories of Knowledge Restructuring in Development

This paper reviews recent work on knowledge acquisition with a focus on knowledge restructuring. This work suggests that it may be possible to replace Piagetian theories of global restructuring with a more domain-specific approach. Some forms of learning may give rise to a weak restructuring involving the accumulation of new facts and the formation of new relations between existing concepts. Other forms of learning may involve a radical restructuring that includes a change in core concepts, a change in structure, and a change in the phenomena to be explained. The restructuring view raises important questions about the similarities and differences in the child’s and the scientist’s acquisition of knowledge, and about the role of prior knowledge in instruction. The domain of observational astronomy is used as an example of how these issues can be applied to study the child’s development of knowledge. Several mechanisms for knowledge restructuring are discussed and it is argued that these issues are crucial for a theory-based approach to the study of instruction.