Designing for conceptual change. Different research perspectives-Different educational implications. Invited symposium

For more than thirty years, research on conceptual change has provided detailed descriptions and explanations of students' difficulties in diverse areas, such as physics, mathematics, biology and history. Under the common denominator of the conceptual change approach to learning, several distinct theoretical assumptions have served as a source of hypotheses and have guided rich and fruitful research agendas. This invited symposium focuses on the instructional implications of research on conceptual change learning. Cognitive conflict has been – and possibly, still is – typically recognized as a conceptual change teaching practice. Effective as it may be in certain contexts, cognitive conflict became subject to severe criticism as its limitations emerged and were pointed out. Meanwhile, it was also made clear that conceptual change research could not but take into consideration the socio-cultural context and also metacognitive, motivational and affective parameters of learning. This resulted in richer, even radically different views of learning than the ones held at the time when researchers took interest in the problem of conceptual change. The question arises, what nowadays' conceptual change approaches to learning have to offer in relation to instruction.Four distinguished researchers, each starting from a distinct theoretical perspective on conceptual change learning, focus on theory-based and at the same time evidence-supported instructional implications of their approach. The differences, but also the commonalities of their suggestions will be pointed out and discussed, with a view to inform the instruction concerned audience of the conference, who care about the issue of conceptual change in learning.status: publishe