Conceptual Change
We conduct research on conceptual change in science using both behavioral tasks and brain imaging. Using behavioral studies, we have been investigating students' representations of scientific concepts and how these concepts change (or do not change) as a function of instruction, experimentation, group discussions and exposure to new data. Conceptual change at a deep level is notoriously difficult to achieve. We have found that many factors such as goals, core knowledge, and viable alternatives influence whether and how conceptual change occurs. We have devised a number of concept mapping tasks, analogical reasoning tasks, and verbal protocol tasks that allow us to probe changes in concepts as a function of an educational intervention. We are now using these behavioral tasks in conjunction with brain imaging techniques and are starting to build an account of when conceptual change will and will not occur.
Using fMRI tasks with science and non-science students, we have been able to find key sites that are activated by learning in a particular domain and why certain physics concepts are difficult to acquire. The results of these experiments demonstrate that fMRI can be used to understand the ways that frontal brain regions are involved in conceptual change and real-world learning. This provides novel insights into the effects of learning and education on the brain. Using Physics, Chemistry and Biology domains to discover what cognitive processes (and concomitant brain mechanisms) are common to conceptual change in these different domains we are investigating what novel learning paradigms can be used to overcome difficulties that students encounter with many scientific concepts.
Research Funded by The National Science Foundation