Three Types of Conceptual Change: Belief Revision, Mental Model Transformation, and Categorical Shift

Learning of complex material, such as concepts encountered in science classrooms, can occur under at least three different conditions of prior knowledge. First, a student may have no prior knowledge of the to-be-learned concepts, although they may have some related knowledge. In this case, prior knowledge is missing, and learning consists of adding new knowledge. Second, a student may have some correct prior knowledge about the to-be-learned concepts, but that knowledge is incomplete. In this incomplete knowledge case, learning can be conceived of as gap filling. In both missing and incomplete knowledge conditions, knowledge acquisition is of the enriching kind (Carey, 1991). In a third condition, a student may have acquired ideas, either in school or from everyday experience, that are “in conflict with” the to-be-learned concepts (Vosniadou, 2004). Knowledge acquisition under this third case is of the conceptual change kind. It is customary to assume in this case that the prior “in conflict with” knowledge is incorrect or misconceived, and the to-be-learned information is correct, by some normative standard. Thus, learning in this third condition is not adding new knowledge or gap filling incomplete knowledge; rather, learning is changing prior misconceived knowledge to correct knowledge. This chapter focuses on this conceptual change kind of learning. Although this definition of conceptual change appears straightforward, conceptual change kind of learning entails several complex, non-transparent, and interleaved issues. Some of the key non-transparent ideas are: (a) In what ways is knowledge misconceived? (b) Why is such misconceived knowledge often resistant to change? (c) What constitutes a change in prior knowledge? and (d) Ho should instruction be designed to promote conceptual change? The existence of decades of research on conceptual change speaks to the complexity of these issues. This chapter hopes to add clarity to some of these issues by laying out three different grain sizes in which knowledge can be “in conflict with” the to-be-learned materials, postulating for each grain size the processes by which such “in conflict with knowledge” can be changed, and speculating on the kind of instruction that might achieve such change. We start by providing some definitions and assumptions about concepts and categories in conceptual change.