Conceptual Change Strategies

        There are a number of strategies that researchers have determined to be effective in supporting conceptual understanding. They are designed to help the teachers know where their students are in their initial thinking and where they need to be to understand and be able to use scientific concepts. These strategies as aligned can be combined into instructional models to be used within a range of contexts, experiences like in the laboratories and instructional materials. Below are some of the strategies.

        Activity Before Concept, Concept Before Vocabulary (ABC-CBV) teaching starts with activity or investigation so students have an opportunity to interact with phenomena, objects and materials before being presented with a concept. Vocabulary is then introduced after students have been presented with the concept which they can attach to the activity they experienced. When a lab activity is conducted it is to reinforce the concepts or vocabulary presented to students but if their initial thinking is not engaged, challenged or worked through during the activity or discussion the experience does not do much to develop conceptual understanding.

            Analogies and metaphor  help the teacher to see how simple terms can have many different meanings to his students. It is making the strange familiar by connecting a new concept to something familiar to the student. For example, an analogy of the heart, a pump would be a good choice to help student understand the concept of blood circulation. Students are familiar with a pump and connect with the strange idea of the heart’s function.

            To effectively learn science, multiple predictions, explanations, or positions have to be supported which is argumentation. Students get reason to agree or disagree and back up their positions with evidence. Students are required to talk about their ideas, experiences and observations in order to process and learn from them thus deepening their conceptual knowledge. For example, whether the earth is really round presents students with an argumentation where they include the reasons for one position versus the opposing views. Like there are discussions that the earth is flat and if it was really round people would fall off.

            Claim Support Question (CSQ) is a thinking strategy designed to help students to identify claims and hold them up to thoughtful scrutiny. Students first think of making claims by looking for patterns, prior observations, for example, how magnets interacts with objects. If asked they will talk about how a magnet moves objects without touching them and from what they observe they shall obtain evidence to support the claim that it is actually some metallic objects that it moves like steel paper clips.

            Concept Mapping graphically connects terms with connecting lines on which the terms are written. It can be used as stimulation proceeding to instruction or after students have had chance to develop ideas. For example, the concept of evidence of evolution where students use open source concept mapping software to complete four iterations of their concept map. The subject matter to be learnt is made conceptually clear and is presented with examples that relate to the student’s prior knowledge about evolution.

            A discrepant question used with a visual model emphasizes the importance of students and teachers as partners in achieving a target understanding of a particular concept. Students present a model of a concept in a visual manner before instruction is given. For example, when the target is how a human heart works, a student draws the heart with a hole in the bottom and when the teacher asks if the model shows blood going out the bottom to the body the student starts to think of complications of such an occurrence and closes the hole in the heart. When the teacher asks where they want the blood to go, further revision follows in small steps and the model evolves to something closer to the target.

            Group interactive frayer model was originally used as a content literacy strategy to develop vocabulary. This strategy extends a complete worksheet into a small group and whole class activity. For example, presenting learners with the question if concrete, clay pots or glass are rocks can be used to draw student’s ideas about things formed geologically and human made.

            KWL-which stands for what I know, what I want to know and what I learned, is a strategy that has been used by teachers to lead discussions in all disciplines. It engages students to use their prior knowledge to lead the lesson as they reflect on what they have learnt. For example, if students say they know that air has weight, the teacher might compare the weight of a deflated basketball and an inflated one. The results are then recorded in a learn column and students are then asked about what they learnt.

            Our best thinking until now is a graphic organizer that was developed to elaborate the discussion that occurred during the use of everyday science mystery series. For example, students may list possible variables that affect the period of the pendulum like its mass. The students now get a series of questions for which they must design tests and collect data that can be an evidence for this claim.