When knowledge contradicts intuition: Conceptual change

In this chapter, we discuss conceptual change and its implications for high school students. Much of what we present comes from the research we engaged in as part of the National Reading Research Center. These studies were conducted in high school physics classes and in the high school integrated curriculum project depicted in chapter 1 of this volume. We begin by presenting conceptual change problems in physics. Our purpose in presenting these problems is to help readers understand what we mean by conceptual change. We then discuss theories of conceptual change and highlight the research we did that illustrates these theories, addressing the roles of instruction, textbook, motivation, and gender in conceptual change in science classes. Finally, we discuss a study of conceptual change in social science conducted with the integrated curriculum students.