5

Innovation education meets

conceptual change research
Conceptual analysis and instructional
implications1

Stella Vosniadou and Panagiotis Kampylis

NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, GREECE, AND INSTITUTE FOR PROSPECTIVE
TECHNICOLOGICAL STUDIES (IPTS), EUROPEAN COMMISSION, SPAIN

Summary: We argue that science education designed to promote conceptual change can play an
important role in an overall program of innovation education. Teaching science from a conceptual
change point of view requires the development of explicit, reflective and metacognitively guided
knowledge construction and the cultivation of learning strategies for the deliberate reorganization
of knowledge, such as analogy making and model-­based reasoning. We argue that the creation of
a classroom environment that fosters conceptual change activities in the process of learning science
can help create in students a ‘conceptual change know-­how schema’ which can generalize to other
situations supporting knowledge-­revision processes and the creation of new ideas and products.

Key words: Conceptual change, innovation education, science education, metaconceptual aware-
ness, instructional analogies, model-­based reasoning.

Introduction
Conceptual change research investigates knowledge acquisition processes in situations where the
new, to-­be-learned, information is very different from learners’ prior beliefs and requires the crea-
tion of new concepts (Hatano & Inagaki, 2003). Research on conceptual change has emerged in
recent years as an important area in educational psychology. Conceptual change instruction attempts
to promote metaconceptual awareness and intentional learning and to teach students the cognitive
mechanisms that can help them engage in deliberate knowledge restructuring. In this chapter we
focus on science education and argue that when science is taught from a conceptual change per-
spective it has the potential to promote the formation of new concepts and to develop future
innovators in science and technology. The pages that follow start with a clarification of what con-
ceptual change research is and does. We continue to argue that similar mental processes are involved
in scientific discovery and technological innovation and that they both require conceptual change.
In the last section we describe the basic elements of a conceptual change approach to teaching

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science and explain how this type of science education can play an important role in an overall
program of innovation education.

Conceptual change research – definitional issues

Concepts are not static. They change with learning and development in students but also in situ­
ations of scientific and technological development through the practices of scientists and inventors.
There can be many kinds of conceptual changes, from the small and mundane which may involve
the addition of an instance to an existing concept, to the most radical, which may involve changes
in theory and the generation of new concepts. We will use the term conceptual change to refer to the
latter, more radical types of changes. Conceptual change can be the outcome of scientific discovery
and technological innovation, but can also be the product of teaching, as, for example, in situations
that involve the learning of science.
The problem of conceptual change became first apparent by philosophers and historians of science
in their attempts to explain how scientific theories change. According to Kuhn (1970) normal science
operates within sets of shared beliefs, assumptions, commitments and practices that constitute ‘para-
digms’. Discoveries emerge over time that cannot be accommodated within the existing paradigm.
When these anomalies accumulate, science enters a period of crisis which is eventually resolved by a
revolutionary change in paradigm. Many scientific revolutions, such as the Newtonian theory in
physics, the Copernican theory in astronomy and the Darwinian theory in biology can be seen as the
products of radical conceptual change. In these cases new theories are generated to explain known and
new phenomena and how new concepts are formed (Thagard, 1992).
Ideas about conceptual change from the history and philosophy of science were soon brought
to developmental psychology through the work of Susan Carey (1985) and to science education
through the work of Michael Posner and his colleagues (Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog,
1982). By the late 1970s it had become apparent that students bring to the science education task
alternative frameworks, preconceptions or misconceptions some of which are rather robust and
difficult to extinguish through teaching (e.g., White & Gunstone, 2008). In some cases these alter-
native frameworks appeared to be similar to earlier theories in the history of science, such as, for
example, the impetus theory2 in mechanics (McCloskey, 1983). Posner et al. (1982) drew an
analogy between the concepts of normal science and scientific revolution offered by philosophers
of science such as Kuhn (1970) and Piaget’s (1970) concepts of assimilation and accommodation,
and derived from this analogy an instructional theory to promote ‘accommodation’ in students’
learning of science. According to Posner et al. (1982) students need to undergo a radical conceptual
change when it comes to learning scientific concepts like force, heat and energy.
Over the years, a significant body of research emerged to investigate the processes of conceptual
change, the learning mechanisms involved in the generation of new concepts and the instructional
strategies that can promote it. The theoretical and methodological discussions that have taken place in
this process have been some of the most interesting in the field of learning and instruction, raising
important questions about the nature of knowledge, its organization and its revision. Although the
beginnings of conceptual change research can be traced to scientific discovery in physics and physics
education, this research is by no means restricted to physics but makes a larger claim about learning
that transcends many domains of knowledge and can apply, for example, to biology (Inagaki &
Hatano, 2002), psychology (Wellman, 2002), history (Leinhardt & Ravi, 2008), political science
(Voss & Wiley, 2006), medicine (Kaufman, Keselman, & Patel, 2008), environmental learning (Rick-
inson, Lundholm, & Hopwood, 2009) and mathematics (Vosniadou & Verschaffel, 2004).
Some researchers are not persuaded that there is a need to distinguish ‘conceptual change’ proc-
esses from learning in general. We argue, however, that while conceptual change is undeniably a

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S. Vosniadou and P. Kampylis

form of learning, it is important to differentiate it from other types of learning because it requires
fundamental changes in the content and organization of existing knowledge and hence the devel-
opment of new learning mechanisms for deliberate knowledge restructuring and the generation of
new concepts. Most learning is implicit and additive involving mainly the enrichment of prior
knowledge. Conceptual change cannot however be achieved through the use of implicit,
enrichment-­types of learning mechanisms alone. In fact, the use of enrichment-­types of mecha-
nisms in situations that require conceptual change can often lead to the creation of misconceptions
or, what we call, ‘synthetic models’ (Vosniadou, Vamvakoussi, & Skopeliti, 2008). For example,
young children often interpret the information regarding the spherical shape of the Earth to mean
that the Earth is circular but flat like a pancake or that the Earth is spherical but people live on flat
ground inside it (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992). These types of misconceptions are synthetic con-
structions which suggest that students are implicitly assimilating the new information regarding the
spherical shape of the Earth into their intuitive model of a flat Earth. Similarly, erroneous strategies
used by students in mathematics, such as the common mistake that 1/3 + 1/3 = 2/6 (National
Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008), reveal the implicit interference of natural number operations
in fraction addition (see Vamvakoussi & Vosniadou, 2010, for many more examples).
It is therefore important to develop instruction to help students distinguish the instances of
learning that require conceptual change from those that do not and alert them as to the use of the
appropriate learning strategies. Even more importantly, instruction needs to develop in students the
kind of intentional and metacognitively guided learning that will help them identify situations
requiring conceptual change themselves. Finally, it is important to teach students new learning
strategies that can be used for the conscious and deliberate reorganization of existing knowledge
(Vosniadou, 2008; Vosniadou & Mason, 2012).

What is the relevance of conceptual change for technological innovation?

Innovation is usually defined as the implementation of creative ideas into new products, processes and
services (Shavinina, 2003, 2009b). Innovation is closely linked to creativity with which it is often con-
fused (Kahl, Fonseca, & Witte, 2009). For some scholars (e.g., West, 2002), innovation is a two-­
component, but non-­linear process, encompassing the development of creative ideas as well as their
application in practice. According to this view, creative ideas are the foundation on which innovation
is built. In other words, creative thinking, personal and/or collective, is the starting point for innova-
tion; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Moreover, although the term innovation usually
characterizes the creation of new technological inventions, it can also apply to non-­technological and
social innovations in public or private services (e.g., European Commission, 2008).
Technological innovation and scientific discovery both involve the generation of new concepts.
Some may argue that inventors are different from scientists in that they create new technologies to
accomplish practical goals rather than discover new theoretical ideas. However, as Thagard and
Croft (1999) have persuasively argued, the cognitive processes implicated in scientific discovery
and technological innovation are fundamentally similar (see also Nersessian, 2008). According to
Thagard and Croft (1999, p. 137), both scientific discovery and technological innovation, ‘involve
the generation of new concepts, although technological concepts usually apply to newly created
devices rather than to discovered or postulated entities’. In both cases, the important and distin-
guishing characteristic of the discovery process is that it involves conceptual change (Thagard & Croft,
1999).
In their interesting article, Thagard and Croft (1999) analyze two examples, one of scientific
discovery and one of technological innovation to explicate the common conceptual change pro­
cesses involved. The case of scientific discovery is the bacterial theory of ulcers. The bacterial

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theory of ulcers was formulated by Warrant and Marschall who discovered a new bacterium in the
stomachs of people with gastritis which they named Helicobacter pylori. This discovery led them to
the hypothesis that ulcers may be caused by a bacterial infection rather than by stress or acidity. This
in turn led them to propose that ulcers can be treated with antibiotics. Initially this controversial
hypothesis was viewed with a great deal of skepticism. However, it is now widely accepted that
antibiotics can be used in the treatment of many ulcers to eradicate the bacteria responsible for
them.
The example of technological innovation used by Thagard and Croft (1999) is the construction
of Java. Java, one of the most successful new programming languages, was created by James Gosling
in 1991 as part of a project at Sun Microsystems. Its success is attributed mostly to the discovery of
a new concept, which is called ‘applet’. Java applets are programs that can be downloaded from the
web. Java’s innovation was that applets are platform independent and can be downloaded on to
computers with different CPU chips and operating systems.
Based on the above analysis, as well as on more extensive studies that compared 200 cases of
scientific discovery and technological innovation, Thagard and his colleagues concluded that they
all involve the generation of new concepts, namely conceptual change. It follows that research on
how to promote conceptual change through education should be relevant to innovation educa-
tion. Indeed, the innovation research community has recognized the importance of investigating
the development of scientific talent and recommendations have been made to fund programs
that study these developmental processes as an important aspect of IE (Shavinina, this volume).

Innovation education
Theorists, scholars, researchers, policy-­makers and educators deploy a range of claims about inno-
vation education, which emerge from different theoretical and academic traditions, scientific fields,
policy contexts and sociocultural perspectives. Research on IE can be separated into three catego-
ries: (i) gifted education, (ii) creativity training programs and (iii) case studies.

Gifted education programs

Shavinina (this volume, 2009a) describes eleven interrelated and overlapping components of IE that
refer mainly to the identification and development of the gifted and talented. These include new
gifted education programs, new programs for the development of entrepreneurial giftedness, pro-
grams to develop the metacognitive abilities of the gifted and their abilities to implement things –
the so-­called executive abilities – new programs to study the scientific talent of Nobel laureates, and
so on. According to Shavinina (this volume), the proposed components of IE constitute the know-
­what part of IE and can be implemented through a cluster of ICT – the know-­how part of IE – which
she calls High Intellectual and Creative Educational Multimedia Technologies (HICEMTs). With
their general and specific sets of characteristics – which are described in detail in Shavinina (this
volume, 2009a) – HICEMTs seem to be a promising way to deliver IE because they provide stu-
dents with exceptional opportunities for personalized, differentiated, and flexible learning and actu-
alization of their own mental potential and the subsequent development of their intellectual and
creative abilities.
Although an important part of IE centers on the development of those individuals who are
exceptionally gifted and talented (Shavinina, 2009b), other perspectives emphasize the importance
of IE addressed to all students. In fact, current sociocultural approaches to education argue that all
humans with normal capacities are able to produce innovative ideas, at least in some domain
(Sawyer, 2006) and therefore have the potential to become innovators. According to this ­argument,

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schools ‘should prepare all students to participate in complex creative systems, in which they will
need to work collaboratively, at multiple levels of organization, to build knowledge together’
(Sawyer, 2006, p. 43).

Creativity training programs

Creativity training programs involve training in specific heuristics or strategies that help students
achieve cognitive flexibility and facilitate the generation of new ideas. The effectiveness of these
strategies for performing creative tasks leads to feelings of efficacy and motivates people to engage
to creative work. Scott, Leritz, and Mumford (2004a, b) reviewed 156 creativity training programs
and categorized them into four clusters. The first cluster is idea production training. It covers several
forms of creativity training – such as situated idea production or computer-­based idea production
– that focus mainly on idea generation, divergent thinking, ideation, elaboration and brainstorm-
ing. The second cluster is imagery training. It is the most common type of training focusing on
expressive activities and imaginative exercises. The third cluster, cognitive training, incorporates
processing activities such as conceptual combination, analogies and metaphors. The fourth cluster
is thinking skills training; it focuses on the critical aspects of thinking and incorporates processes such
as problem finding, idea evaluation, solution monitoring, constraint identification and meta-­
cognition.

Case studies
The research on creativity training programs is of great importance and can provide valuable
insights for innovation education content and procedures. According to Scott et al. (2004b, p. 383),
however, creativity training should not be viewed merely as the implementation of a predeter-
mined set of heuristics or strategies but rather as a flexible and holistic attempt to enhance creative
thought and innovative action based on ‘real-­world’ cases. This conclusion agrees with the sugges-
tions of Thorsteinsson and Denton (2003) who presented one of the few implementations of IE in
Icelandic schools, where it has become an independent area of curriculum.
The implemented model of IE is based on problem-­based project work and ideation: formulating a
problem or need discovered in one’s environment, finding a solution and bringing it to a realiza-
tion by employing integrated knowledge gained not only across the school curriculum but also the
real-­life experiences. In other words, this model of IE has a cross-­curricula character based on
innovation processes rather than subject content and it is strongly connected with real-­life needs
and experiences. Moreover, Thorsteinsson and Denton (2003; see also Thorsteinsson, this volume)
report that IE can be a foundation for students’ ethical development and provide specific examples
that support that viewpoint.
Other studies also report success in teaching innovation related cognitive skills in real world
situations. For example, Beyers (2010) reports preliminary results from a pilot study that was con-
ducted with Grade 10 students from South African schools who were exposed to a high-­tech rapid-
­prototyping environment. Students followed a design process consisting of five steps: investigate,
design, make, evaluate and communicate. Preliminary results from this study indicate that the par-
ticipants were able to operate effectively in a post-­constructivist environment by applying their
collective prior knowledge, skills, attitudes and values in order to produce innovative solutions to
the challenge provided by using a range of ICT available to them.

Finally, innovation education research has produced specific recommendations for policy makers
(Burke & Grosvernor, 2003; Cachia, Ferrari, Ala-­Mutka, & Punie, 2010; Kampylis, Saariluoma, &

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Berki, 2011) which involve, amongst others, changes in assessment, initial education and in-­service
training for teachers, and for integrating and utilizing ICT and digital media in a creative and inno-
vative way. Last, but not least, changes are proposed in the overall educational culture of stakehold-
ers such as policy makers, educational authorities and parents. These recommendations emphasize
the need for a holistic strategy for revising all the areas of formal education in order to establish a
supporting environment for creativity and innovation.

Teaching science from a conceptual change point of view as part of an

overall program of innovation education
As we saw in the previous section, recommendations for innovation education usually aim at the
development in students of certain domain general cognitive skills across the whole curriculum.
We would like to propose here that, in addition to the above recommendations, innovation educa-
tion can be greatly enhanced by teaching subject matter content – and specifically teaching science
– from a conceptual change point of view.
Taking a conceptual change point of view means teaching science in ways that make explicit to
students the need to revise their knowledge and to create new concepts. It aims at helping students
become aware that their prior knowledge needs to be substantially restructured both in terms of its
content and its structure, and that new concepts need to learned. This requires the development of
new learning strategies which can be helpful in the gradual reorganization of knowledge, rather
than in its enrichment.
Changing existing beliefs, when they are inconsistent with currently accepted scientific explana-
tions, has proven to be a difficult task to accomplish with instruction. Constructivist theory is based
on the premises that new information can be built on what is already known. It does not tell us
what to do when new information is incompatible with what is known. This is an important
problem for science instruction but it is also a central problem for innovation education. The dis-
covery of new technological artifacts often requires radically new ways of looking at things, ways
that break the barriers established by existing lines of thought.
We argue that through the explicit and conscious experiences of conceptual change in science
classes, students can gradually become capable of abstracting a ‘conceptual change know-­how
schema’ and generalize it to other learning situations. This type of ‘how to engage in conceptual
change’ compact knowledge can help students distinguish situations where radical knowledge revi-
sion is required and apply appropriate learning strategies to make it possible.
Instruction for conceptual change requires long term planning, substantial changes in curricula
and extensive sociocultural support (Hatano & Inagaki, 2003; Nersessian, 2008; Vosniadou, 2003,
2007); we do not have space here to describe all the aspects of an educational environment that
fosters conceptual change in science (see Vosniadou & Mason, 2012). For this reason, we will focus
in this chapter on three important factors that have been associated with conceptual change instruc-
tion: the first concerns the whole educational environment which should exhibit a focus on the
creation of students’ metaconceptual awareness and the enhancement of intentional learning; the
last two describe two learning mechanisms that can be helpful in knowledge restructuring processes
– the use of instructional analogies, and explanatory models.

Creating an educational environment that enhances metaconceptual awareness

Metaconceptual awareness is awareness of the intellectual content of one’s beliefs, as compared to
metacognitive strategies which have to do with procedural knowledge designed to deal, for
example, with comprehension failure. Many students are not aware of their beliefs, particularly

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when these beliefs involve intuitive knowledge about the physical world which is constantly con-
firmed by everyday experience. For example, Vosniadou and her colleagues have shown how the
implicit belief in a top-­down organization of space together with an ‘up-­down gravity’ concept
(i.e. that non-­supported objects will fall ‘down’ until they find some kind of support) can seriously
constrain young children’s representations of the spherical shape of the Earth and create interesting
misconceptions (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992). Similarly, as was mentioned earlier, the implicit
belief that force is a property of inanimate objects that have been set in motion can seriously inter-
fere in the understanding of the Newtonian theory in mechanics even in college students.
Instruction for conceptual change needs to make explicit such intuitive and implicit beliefs that
constrain the acquisition of new knowledge and seriously limit innovation. Many scientific and
technological innovations are based on the elimination of prior beliefs which inhibited new forms
of thinking. Teaching science from a conceptual change point of view helps students understand
that science ideas are not simple and absolute but complex and continuously evolving. Instruction
of this sort can also be instrumental in developing students’ epistemic beliefs. There is emerging but
strong empirical evidence that supports the indirect and direct role of epistemic beliefs on know­
ledge revision processes (Stathopoulou & Vosniadou, 2007; Vosniadou & Mason, 2012).
An instructional strategy commonly used to promote metaconceptual awareness and belief
change is cognitive conflict. In situations of cognitive conflict students are asked to make predic-
tions or explanations of phenomena and are then presented with some contradictory information,
such as the results of empirical experiments, demonstrations or data summaries. Some less direct
ways to introduce dissonance is through argumentation in class discussions or in peer collaboration
tasks where information is provided that allows students to discover conflicts between their ideas
and the normative view.
There is a large and controversial literature on the effects of cognitive conflict (Clement, 2008;
Limon, 2001). Some researchers report negative results with the use of cognitive conflict as an
instructional strategy (Tillema & Knol, 1997), but many studies report considerable success. Posi-
tive are also the results coming from the use of refutations in scientific text. Refutational text
explicitly states readers’ alternative conceptions about a topic, directly refutes them and introduces
scientific conceptions as viable alternatives (Hynd, McWhorter, Phares, & Suttles, 1994). Refuta-
tional texts have been found to be more effective than standard expository texts for knowledge
revision in various science domains. In physics, for example, they were more supportive for learn-
ing meaningfully new concepts about Newtonian mechanics (Kendeou & van den Broek, 2007),
energy (Diakidoy, Kendeou, & Ioannides, 2003), and light and vision (Mason, Gava, & Boldrin,
2008).
How does cognitive conflict work? Experiencing psychological conflict has been related to
increases in arousal potential that motivate the learner to attempt to resolve the conflict (e.g.,
Berlyne, 1960). It generates what Hatano and Inagaki (2003) call ‘epistemic motivation’ to check
and revise prior knowledge. Limon (2001) argues that cognitive conflict situations demand from
students a higher level of cognitive engagement which may increase their motivation for concep-
tual change, resulting in deeper processing of information.
Cognitive conflict cannot produce conceptual change by itself but must be used together with
knowledge building strategies in the context of a rich learning environment that fosters and sustains
conceptual change under substantial sociocultural support (Clement, 2008). Inagaki and Hatano
(1977), for example, showed that introducing a controversial experiment in the class and asking
students to make a prediction can be helpful in generating fruitful class discussion that can lead to
a deeper comprehension of the scientific concept. Dialogical interaction, argumentation, collabora-
tion, classroom discussion and meaningful practices around carefully designed curricula based on
students’ learning progressions are the means of developing metaconceptual awareness, and

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p­ rolonged motivation for change. It is through these kinds of socioculturally based practices that
students need to be guided by teachers to a new form of explicit, intentional learning that has the
potential to make them learn and think like scientists.

Developing knowledge restructuring learning strategies – instructional analogies

Instructional analogies are explicit analogies in which a less familiar concept or explanation is intro-
duced by appealing to its relational similarity to another concept from a different but more familiar
domain. For example, the concept of electricity can be made meaningful through an analogy to
water flow (Gentner & Gentner, 1983). In this analogy, electricity is mapped to water, wires to
pipes, batteries to reservoirs, current to flowing water, voltage to pressure and resistors to narrow
constrictions in pipes. Learners can transfer the relevant information from the familiar base to the
unfamiliar target and use it in order to better understand how electricity works. Analogical reason-
ing provides an important, constructivist, mechanism that can facilitate knowledge revision and
conceptual change. Instructional analogies allow learners to transfer existing representations from a
familiar domain to start the knowledge acquisition process or revise prior knowledge in a different
area of thought (Vosniadou, 1989).
Most of the research on the use of analogies in science education shows positive results, but not
always. It appears that it is important to teach students how to use analogies for belief revision
because they do not always know how to do this on their own (Clement, 2008; Glynn, 2007).
Glynn (2007) discussed the problems that follow when analogies are used without sufficient elabo-
ration that ensures that students understand them and use them effectively. He developed the
Teaching-­With-Analogies Model (TWA) to help teachers lead the students through the steps of
comparing the base and the target, identifying the relevant features, mapping similarities and
drawing conclusions. Analogies can be combined with dissonance producing strategies for better
effects. According to Clement (2008) using dissonance strategies together with analogies can be
more powerful for conceptual change than using analogies alone. Vosniadou and Skopeliti (submit-
ted) have come to similar conclusions.

Model-­based reasoning
According to Nersessian (2008), a model is an idealized and schematic abstraction that represents
the physical system to which it refers by ‘having surrogate objects and properties, relations, behav-
iors, or functions of these that are in correspondence with it’ (p.  394). Models can be internal
representations in the form of ‘mental models’, or external representations such as diagrams, graphs,
maps, computer models and simulations, or even cultural artifacts like a globe. The focus is here on
the construction of external models, and in particular on what Clement (2008) calls explanatory
models. An explanatory model provides a description of a hidden, non-­observable mechanism that
explains how the system works and about the causes behind observable cases. Model-­based reason-
ing involves the construction or retrieval of a model and the derivation of inferences through
model manipulation.
There is a growing literature that shows that even preschool children are capable of engaging in
model-­based activities that help them construct new representations and understand new phenom-
ena in science (e.g., Wiser & Smith, 2008; Clement & Steinberg, 2002). Wiser and Smith (2008)
argue how model-­based activities allow children to visualize decomposing matter into tiny pieces
that continue to exist even if they are not directly observable by the senses, and as a result to slowly
create a compositional model of matter according to which any piece of matter, however small, has
weight and occupies space.

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S. Vosniadou and P. Kampylis

By constructing explanatory models students translate the verbal, abstract theories and explana-
tions of science into concrete representations that can be explored and examined. The modeling
activity becomes the means for understanding underlying mechanisms, correcting faulty represen-
tations and making new predictions. In addition, the construction of models is an activity that has
the potential to increase students’ interest and maintain their reasoning for long periods of time.
To sum up, it has been argued that with extensive sociocultural support science teaching class-
rooms can be designed that teach students specific learning strategies that help them reorganize
prior knowledge in the process of acquiring subject-­matter knowledge. This type of science instruc-
tion has the potential to create a ‘conceptual change know-­how schema’ which students can learn
to apply to other subject-­matter domains in the classroom and more generally.

Conclusions
Teaching science from a conceptual change point of view can provide an additional, subject-­
specific means of enhancing an overall program of innovation education. This type of instruction
requires creating in students vivid conceptual change experiences as they learn specific strategies for
knowledge reorganization in the process of acquiring subject-­matter know­ledge with extensive
sociocultural support. Teaching students how to gradually reorganize prior knowledge and create
new concepts in the process of learning science can create the necessary metaconceptual awareness,
belief revision and concept acquisition strategies that can promote creativity and innovation in
other domains of thought. The explicit and conscious experiences of conceptual change that stu-
dents can have in the process of learning science can in time enable them to create a ‘conceptual
change know-­how schema’ allowing them to recognize situations that require knowledge restruc-
turing and apply learning strategies that have proven to be fruitful in the past to generate new theo-
retical concepts as well as new practical, technological devices.

Notes
1 The views expressed in this chapter are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the European Commission.
2 In the Middle Ages, an interesting theory was proposed known as the ‘impetus theory’. The most articu-
lated view of the theory was that of Buridan’s (1300–1388). According to Buridan, when an object is set
in motion an ‘impetus’ (or ‘vis’ and ‘forza’ in Latin) is imparted into the object. This ‘impetus’ keeps the
object in motion for some time after it has lost its contact with the agent. As the impetus gradually dissi-
pates, the object slows down, until it finally stops or falls to the ground due to its weight (Franklin, 1978).
The impetus theory resembles a common misconception found in children and adults that there is a force
within inanimate objects that have been set in motion even when the objects have lost their contact with
the original mover. This force gradually dissipates and finally runs out as the object slows down and stops.

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