This course examines the development, the acquisitions, and the different research perspectives on the framework of conceptual change, as well as its application to the design of innovative learning paths. The approach puts into balance a historical and a thematic perspective, illustrating the origins and the development trajectories of the different models, and discussing literature on strategies and learning paths based on each of these models. Specifically, the course covers:

• The semantic turn in the description of cognitive development: learning scientific ideas as the building of new systems of interpretation of phenomena.
• The classical model of conceptual change and its limitations.
• Other models of conceptual change:
  • Framework theory (Vosniadou) and its applications.
  • Ontological shift (Chi) and its applications: basic shifts in the ontology of concepts, from object to process, and from sequential process to emergent process.
  • The forms of conceptual construction (Carey) and its applications: coalescence and differentiation.
  • Knowledge in Pieces (diSessa) and its applications: force as coordination class.
• The multiple components of conceptual change
  • ontology: examples of ontological development, from the works of Vosniadou, Chi, Carey.
  • epistemology: as a system of multidimensional beliefs on the nature of knowledge, of knowing and of learning, which develops into more and more sophisticated beliefs (Hofer and Bendixen), as the framing of the nature of the activity carried out by the knower in response to situational demands, that gradually evolves into stable networks, denoted as “epistemological frames” (Elby and Hammer).
  • models and modeling: constraint-based modeling as the epistemic engine of the conceptual change process (Smith and Amin).
  • social interaction: role of social interaction an of discourse analysis on the learning of concepts (e.g, Lehrer, Schauble, and Lucas).
• Description of the elements of a Learning Progression, intended as an idealized model of how students can develop understanding or skill in the use of disciplinary core ideas and science practices, building on their conceptual and reasoning resources at the start of an educational stage (Smith and Amin).