1Third Misconceptions Seminar Proceedings (1993) Paper Title: STUDYING CONCEPTUAL EVOLUTION IN THE CLASSROOM AS CONCEPTUAL PROFILE CHANGE

Abstract: The research on children's ideas about scientific conceptions in the last two decades has generated a constructivist view of learning that seems to be one of the major influences in science and mathematics education (Matthews, 1992). Despite the great variety of different views that appears in the literature under the same label, there are at least two main features that seem to be shared by the different approaches: that "learning comes about through the learner's active involvement in knowledge construction " (Driver, 1989, p. 481); and the pupils ' previous and alternative ideas play a fundamental role in the learning process, as learning is possible only on the basis of what the learner already knows