Rethinking the role of resubsumption in conceptual change

Why is conceptual change difficult yet possible? Ohlsson (2009/this issue) proposes that the answer can be found in the dynamics of resubsumption, or the process by which a domain of experience is resubsumed under an intuitive theory originally constructed to explain some other domain of experience. Here, it is argued that conceptual change is difficult in two distinct senses—that is, difficult to initiate and difficult to complete—and that Ohlsson’s proposal addresses the latter but not the former. The implications of this argument for how conceptual change might be best facilitated in the science classroom are discussed as well. In a classic study by McCloskey, Caramazza, and Green (1980), college undergraduates were asked to draw the tra-jectory of a ball shot through a curved tube resting on a flat surface. Although most participants had taken one or more physics courses prior to the study, many still drew physi-cally impossible trajectories—that is, trajectories in which the ball continued to travel in a curved motion after exiting the tube. This intuition is inconsistent not only with the way objects actually move but also with the Newtonian principles these students had presumably learned in their prior course-work. From where do such misconceptions arise? Why do such misconceptions persist in the face of contrary experi-ence and instruction? And how might such misconceptions be eliminated? These are the questions at the heart of science education research, both in the physical sciences (Clement, 1982; Hal-loun & Hestenes, 1985; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992) and th