Learning to Use Scientific Concepts

In their abstract, Treagust and Duit ask “whether conceptual change can provide a powerful framework for improving instructional practice in such a way that students’ levels of scientific literacy are significantly increased. ” And later in their paper they quote PISA 2000’s definition of scientific literacy as “the capacity to identify questions and to draw evidence-based conclusions in order to understand and help to make decisions about the natural world and the changes made to it through human activity” [78].1 Since both quotations are concerned with the achievement of scientific literacy, although addressed from very different perspectives, together they provide a framework within which to consider how far the research on conceptual change has contributed to the achievement of PISA’s goals for scientific literacy. My question is: Is the attempt to change students ’ concepts the best way to proceed? As did Treagust and Duit, I want to start by “considering the nature of conceptions. ” What is at issue, as I see it, is the ontological status of concepts (or “conceptions”). Throughout their paper – and in the Conceptual Change (CC) literature more generally – students are treated as having concepts. This implies, first, that thos