For many, what is felt (hotness and coldness) is indicated by the themometer; e.g.

, the same as what the thermometer indicates and/or that heat and temperature are essentially the same thing. While there is a rational basis in everyday experience to justify these notions, engendering views more consistent with those of scientists, separating these notions is important. Experiencing ways in which these ideaswhat we feel, temperature (what a thermometer measures), and heatmanifest themselves as different must be part of the instructional experiences.

Class Extension: Another conceptual change process which seems to constitute a taxonomic category in class extension. For example, students appear to extend their class of elastic objects from those which visibly deform to include at least some objects which do not visibly deform in order to explain the origin of a force upward from a table on an object place on the table (di Sessa, 1987). Another example is extending the class of objects moving at a constant velocity to include object with the constant velocity, zero. In these two situations there are striking differences between what student believe and what scientists believe about entities which cannot be directly perceived. One cannot directlyperceive a force upword from a table on an object it suppors. For some, the force is inferred as a result of the logical necessity that similar phenomena should have similiar explanation and/or demonstration and argument that the table on which the book rest probably bends slightly. Including rest and constant velocity in a single category of motion comes from logical arguments as well. Galileo decided this on the basis of logical argument as early as the writing od De Motu (Galileo, 1590). Today students might develope such a nation by first considering newly-develop Newtonian notions in the context of the coin-toss problem to differentiate rest from zero velocity and then considering Galilean transformations (between refrences frame moving at different constant velocities with respect to each other) and the forces which act in them. Bridging analoogies used by Clement (which he noticed are used by many students) can be exploited by instructors to induce this sort of conceptual change, too.

Reconceptualization:

In contras to differentiation and class extension, conceptual change from motion implies force to acceleration implies force is a much profound and conceptually difficult change. This becomes obvious as one observes students engaged in such a process in class. It usually occurs when existing explanations are found inadequates for some phenomena which can be observed and manipulated. Such changes in student thinking of scientists in the past which may have occured over a period of decades. I believe other examples of this kind of cahnge include shifts. 1. From thinking about light in pre-ray, person-on-the-street model of light to a scientific ray model of light, or 2. From the scientific ray model of light to the wave model of light, and 3. From thinking of thermal energy as a fluid to thermal energy as an agitation of the internal part of body.(from caloric to kinetic models).

For student coming to a Newtonian view, force shifts from being an attribute of objects which causes velocity to a relation between objects which causes acceleration. There is neither differentiation nor class extentions. Instead this more profound change is a change abstract category (e.g, from attribute to relation) of an important concept (e.g, force) and in its propotional relationship (e,g, causes) to other entities (e.g, velocity and then accelerations). These kinds of shifts represent a significant change in the nature of the entity involved. In this case, force. We believe similar change in student thinking representing the other examples of

reconceptualization listed above will manifest themseles. The general strategy for inducing such changes focuses primarily on students examining their beliefs by attempting to explain or predict, some phenomena and then seeing that existing explanation fail in a way that calls into quetion the beliefs themselves. If a town meeting atmosphere is subsequently created in which student can suggest alternatives without concern for whether their suggestion survive or not and in which thhese ideas can be tested logically and physically by the group, then the students, as a scientific community, will come up with major reconceptualizations. If we find that all conceptual change can be understood as being members of categories such as those describe above, and that those categories are associated with general strategies which can be instantiated for each member of the category, then we will have a powerful tool for inducing conceptual changeone that could be applied

to new example of conceptual change, should they be found to fit an existing category. Even if some examples of conceptual change defy this categorization, as long as majority do not, the taxonomy will be useful. It would not be constructive to wage long arguments over the reality of the taxonomic categories. Debate over taxonomy for the taxonomys sake, I believe would be a perversion of its utility.

Initiating Conceptual Change : Disequilibration I find it useful to think of changes in the knowledge state of a learner of assimilations, accommodations, and disequilibration. These terms were initially introduced in the context of learning by Piaget and are important to my notions of conceptual chage because they are useful, from the standpoint of learning and pedagogy, for describing the necessary conditions for conceptual chage. However, while I think of conceptual change in these Piagetian constructivist terms, I do not invoke the notion of Piagetian stages of cognitive development. Assimilation is the regocnition that an event (physical or metal) fits an existing conception (Glasersfeld, 1987). This recognition process is also a selective ignoring of discrepancies deemed not salient. Assimilations strengthen existing beliefs or convictions. Accommodation is a change in a belief about how the world-works, that is, a cahnge is a conception, which enables an event to be assimilated that could not have been assimilated under previously held conceptions. For examples, when motion is differentiated into velocity and acceleration that motion emplies force remains essentially intact, I would say that within-conception accommodation has accured Conception-chage accommodation occurs reconceptualization. The diference between whitin-conception and conception-change accommodation is a difference in how fundamental the change in the students knowledge is. It is not the same as the difference between Careys weak and strong knowledge restructuring (Carey, 1985), because within-conception accommodation is not the same as Careys weak knowledge restructuring. For accommodation to accur a student must become motivated change ny entering a state of cognitive disequilibration: sometimes profound, sometimes not, but always a disequlibration. Disequilibration can accur when the students expectations are not met, that is when an event dos not fit with the students existing beliefs. Then fact that certain conceptions are not changed as a result of normal instruction is due to the failure of that instruction to disequilibrate students with

respect to the conceptions they hold. If students can assimilate events (words, ideas, experiance) presented in the course of instruction, then there is no disequilibration and no conceptual change. Thus, the point of instruction should be to induce conceptual change. It cannot accompilsh this whitout causing disequilibration. It should be noted, before going on, that disequilibration is not cantadiction. The latter refers to a logical inconsitency whereas disequilibration is a conceptual incongruity. Disequilibration is not a consequence of formal, truth-valued statement, but, rather, of surprise produced when an expected event does not accur. Conceptual change does not depend on contradiction, but on diseqilibration. One cannot prove or disprove a belief. It is better to think in terms of what supports or undermaines belief. In the paper which my colleagues and I recently submitted for publications (Dyksra, Boyle, and Monarch, in press), we describe in some detail several of lessons, both originated by Jim Minstrell, which I have used in my classroom for the last ten years illustrate diffeces in diseqilibrating experiences. In the lessons concering an object at rest on a table (Minstrell, 1982), students seems to the disequlibrated over the experience of finding that peers have a very different view ofhow the world works to explain the phenomena. In the lessons on forces and motion, student are disequilibrated over discrepancy between prediction based their beliefs about how forces related to motion and how objects are obsered to respond to forces, In work that I have done with student learning optics (Dykstra, 1989), students are disequilibrated when they see phenomena which do not behave according to their predictions.

Research Agenda Item : Investigation the nature of disequilibration. Can we record it happening so that it can be studied at some length? Are different types of disequilibration associated with different types of conceptual change? In What ways is it useful to think of the logically-based (object on the table example), and physically-bassed (forces and optics examples) disequlibrations just cited as manifestation of the same thing? Would it be more useful not to consider them both as disequilibration? Can we learn to routinely disequlibrate student when we need to? Would the notion os dissatisfaction wtih conception (Posner, Strike, Hewson, and Gertzog, 1982) be a more generally useful idea than disequilibration?

Nurturing Conceptual Change

If we stopped at the point of disequlibrating students we would quickly find that our efforts had largely been a waste of time. If students are not given a change to build new conception when they find the old ones no longer satisfactory many conclude that they just cannot do science. This is the problem with what I refer to as the discrepant events movement. Typically students are introduced to disceprant events which have a high probability of disequilibrating them, but then given the correct explanation or answer. Relatively little attempt is made to heighten their disequilibrations and they are given no chance to construct their own sensible conclusions. Thus, for them, science becoes magic, its inaccessibility being reinforced for many students. Minstrell (personal communication) and I both have noticed that it si essential to reate a classroom environment in which student are free to suggest tentative ideas and then to test them without concern for the rightness or wrongness of these ideas. In the heat of the debate which sometimes ensues, progress is made when each side attempts to understand the others position well enough to find holes in their argumnet. Sometimes holes are found, but sometimes persuasive ideas are found, too. In my own teaching I have found that if I can start off with the right disequilibrating experience and then stay clear of the ensuing discuccion, but keep the environment as open and non-threatening as possible, the students, not normally expected to on their own, will invent remarkably powerful ideas. It is clear that a community of peers is an important ingredient in the change process (the notion of a town meeting was alluded to above). This is the kind of environment that seems to be very empowering in the classrom. It can be seen clearly in Jim Minstrells classroom and the field work and materials developed by Jhon Clement and david Brown. The work of these three can be found elsewhere in this volume. The observer who suggest that the examples cited herein are just what used to be called discovery learning misses some subtle, and profound points. All too frequently instruction becomes a game of guess the answer the instructor wants.