Description
Students in grades 7-10 often find writing elaborated causal explanations of scientific phenomena challenging and tend to write simple descriptions which often contain many alternative conceptions. Conceptual change strategies over the past 30 years have mainly focused on addressing students cognitive understanding. However, results have been mixed. Although some interventions have led to significant adoption of scientific conceptions, changes are often not long lasting. This has led to the development of a multidimensional conceptual change theory which suggests that addressing epistemological, ontological, social and affective domains of conceptual change is necessary for longer term adoption of scientific conceptions. This research presents longitudinal case studies analysing the implementation of a multidimensional conceptual change approach: the Thinking Frames Approach, across grades 8-10 for teaching topics in Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geology. This is a quasi-experimental study which compares the conceptual gains made in classes learning with the TFA and comparison classes, using pre/post conceptual tests. Improvement in students’ written explanations were also examined and students’ experiences were probed through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. The findings reveal significantly greater adoption of scientific conceptual understanding in the experimental group which persisted over a six-month period. Students’ written explanations also became more elaborated and included more causal chains of reasoning. In addition, students expressed greater confidence in understanding and writing scientific explanations and increased interest in pursuing science in senior high school.| Period | 2 May 2023 |
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| Held at | University of Durham, United Kingdom |
| Degree of Recognition | International |