Conceptual change, how conceptual understanding is transformed, has been investigated extensively since the 1970s. The field has now grown into a multifaceted, interdisciplinary effort with strands of research in cognitive and developmental psychology, education, educational psychology, and the learning sciences. Converging Perspectives on Conceptual Change brings together an extensive team of expert contributors from around the world, and offers a unique examination of how distinct lines of inquiry can complement each other and have converged over time. Amin and Levrini adopt a new approach to assembling the diverse research on conceptual change: the combination of short position pieces with extended synthesis chapters within each section, as well as an overall synthesis chapter at the end of the volume, provide a coherent and comprehensive perspective on conceptual change research. Arranged over five parts, the book covers a number of topics including: the nature of concepts and conceptual change representation, language, and discourse in conceptual change modeling, explanation, and argumentation in conceptual change metacognition and epistemology in conceptual change identity and conceptual change. Throughout this wide-ranging volume, the editors present researchers and practitioners with a more internally consistent picture of conceptual change by exploring convergence and complementarity across perspectives. By mapping features of an emerging paradigm, they challenge newcomers and established scholars alike to embrace a more programmatic orientation towards conceptual change.

Conceptual change, how conceptual understanding is transformed, has been investigated extensively since the 1970s. The field has now grown into a multifaceted, interdisciplinary effort with strands of research in cognitive and developmental psychology, education, educational psychology, and the learning sciences. Converging Perspectives on Conceptual Change brings together an extensive team of expert contributors from around the world, and offers a unique examination of how distinct lines of inquiry can complement each other and have converged over time. Amin and Levrini adopt a new approach to assembling the diverse research on conceptual change: the combination of short position pieces with extended synthesis chapters within each section, as well as an overall synthesis chapter at the end of the volume, provide a coherent and comprehensive perspective on conceptual change research. Arranged over five parts, the book covers a number of topics including: the nature of concepts and conceptual change representation, language, and discourse in conceptual change modeling, explanation, and argumentation in conceptual change metacognition and epistemology in conceptual change identity and conceptual change. Throughout this wide-ranging volume, the editors present researchers and practitioners with a more internally consistent picture of conceptual change by exploring convergence and complementarity across perspectives. By mapping features of an emerging paradigm, they challenge newcomers and established scholars alike to embrace a more programmatic orientation towards conceptual change.

This book starts with the premise that beauty can be an engine of transformation and authentic engagement in an increasingly complex world. It presents an organized picture of highlights from the 13th European Science Education Research Association Conference, ESERA 2019, held in Bologna, Italy. The collection includes contributions that discuss contemporary issues such as climate change, multiculturalism, and the flourishing of new interdisciplinary areas of investigation, including the application of cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and digital humanities to science education research. It also highlights learners’ difficulties engaging with socio-scientific issues in a digital and post-truth era. The volume demonstrates that deepening our understanding is the preferred way to address these challenges and that science education has a key role to play in this effort. In particular, the book advances the argument that the deep and novel character of these challenges requires a collective search for new narratives and languages, an expanding knowledge base and new theoretical perspectives and methods of research. The book provides a contemporary picture of science education research and looks to the theoretical and practical societal challenges of the future.

This book brings together experts engaging in empirical studies on how emotion influences learning and processing for varying text types in different contexts. In our current era, learners are confronted with many and varying sources of information, such as news media, books, websites, social media, scientific articles, communicative interactions, and more. In addition, individuals must learn from such sources, making it important to critically examine the factors underlying learning from text and discourse. Importantly, the valence (pleasantness) and activation (intensity) of learners’ emotions can influence the quality of processing, which could help or hinder the learner’s ability to understand and learn from text. The chapters included in this book work toward developing a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of emotions in supporting learning, comprehension, processing, and conceptual change to draw important connections to the broader fields of text and discourse, learning, and motivation. This is an important and illuminating read for students and scholars of psychology, education and educational technology. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Discourse Processes.

Gathering contributions from leading scholars around the world, this handbook offers a comprehensive resource on the most recent advances in research surrounding the theories, methodologies, and applications of science learning progressions. Researchers and educators have used learning progressions to guide the design and alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and to help students learn scientific knowledge and practices in a coherent and connected way across multiple years. This handbook lays out the development and current state of research in this field across four sections: learning progression theories and methodologies; learning progressions to promote student learning; teachers’ learning and use of learning progressions; and new technology in learning progression research. Featuring internationally-recognized experts in learning progression research as well as up-and-coming voices, the Handbook of Research on Science Learning Progressions offers a defining new resource for researchers, teachers and teacher educators, and curriculum and assessment developers in science education.

Scientific concepts are abstract human constructions, invented to make sense of complex natural phenomena. Scientists use specialised languages, diagrams, and mathematical representations of various kinds to convey these abstract constructions. This book uses the perspectives of embodied cognition and conceptual metaphor to explore how learners make sense of these concepts. That is, it is assumed that human cognition – including scientific cognition – is grounded in the body and in the material and social contexts in which it is embedded. Understanding abstract concepts is therefore grounded, via metaphor, in knowledge derived from sensory and motor experiences arising from interaction with the physical world. The volume consists of nine chapters that examine a number of intertwined themes: how systematic metaphorical mappings are implicit in scientific language, diagrams, mathematical representations, and the gestures used by scientists; how scientific modelling relies fundamentally on metaphor and can be seen as a form of narrative cognition; how implicit metaphors can be the sources of learner misconceptions; how conceptual change and the acquisition of scientific expertise involve learning to coordinate the use of multiple implicit metaphors; and how effective instruction can build on recognising the embodied nature of scientific cognition and the role of metaphor in scientific thought and learning. The volume also includes three extended commentaries from leading researchers in the fields of cognitive linguistics, the learning sciences, and science education, in which they reflect on theoretical, methodological and pedagogical issues raised in the book. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Science Education.

The second edition of the popular Handbook of Self-Regulation of Learning and Performance responds to and incorporates the wealth of new research that the first edition inspired on the subject. At the same time, it advances meaningful perspectives on the scholarship and history that originally shaped the field. Divided into five major sections—basic domains, context, technology, methodology and assessment, and individual and group differences—this thoroughly updated handbook addresses recent theoretical refinements and advances in instruction and intervention that have changed approaches to developing learners’ capabilities to self-regulate in educational settings. Chapters written by leading experts in the field include discussions of methodological advances and expansions into new technologies and the role of learner differences in such areas as contexts and cultures. As a comprehensive guide to a rapidly evolving and increasingly influential subject area, this volume represents contemporary and future thinking in self-regulation theory, research, and applications. Chapter Structure – To ensure uniformity and coherence across chapters, each chapter author addresses the theoretical ideas underlying their topic, research evidence bearing on these ideas, future research directions, and implications for educational practice. Global – A significant number of international contributors are included to reflect the increasingly international research on self-regulation. Readable – In order to make the book accessible to students, chapters have been carefully edited for clarity, conciseness, and organizational consistency. Expertise – All chapters are written by leading researchers who are highly regarded experts on their particular topics and are active contributors to the field.

This edited collection presents a Nordic perspective on intensified discussions concerning digitalization and digital competence in the current trends of educational work. Using a multidisciplinary and holistic approach, the book compares Nordic countries’ attitudes towards the digitalization of education and demonstrates the Nordic region’s position as digital front-runners in a European and a global context. The book provides up-to-date cases and future-oriented perspectives on digitalization and digital competence in educational work. Chapters use empirical data gained from policy documents, interviews, and questionnaires to present nuanced discussions, theoretical perspectives, and implications for the future of digitalization in education. Ultimately, this book’s reach far exceeds that of its Nordic contexts and will be of use to postgraduate students, researchers, and scholars across the globe involved with digital education, teacher education, and educational policy and politics more broadly.

The theory of evolution is considered the unifying theory of biology. An accurate understanding of evolution is vital both for the understanding of diverse topics in biology, but also for societal issues such as antibiotic resistance or biodiversity. In contrast, decades of research in science education have revealed that students have difficulties to accurately understand evolutionary processes such as mutation and natural selection. The majority of this research relies on a conceptual framework of so-called key concepts (variation, selection, inheritance), derived from scholarly descriptions of natural selection. Recent research suggests that non-domain specific concepts such as randomness, probability, spatial and temporal scales, so called threshold concepts, are important for evolution understanding in addition to the key concepts. Thus, many important elements of evolutionary theory are counter-intuitive or lie outside direct perception. Hence, representations such as visualizations, models and simulations are considered to be important for teaching and learning evolution. While the importance of visualizations is generally acknowledged for science education, less is known about how visual design can facilitate students understanding of threshold concepts, such as random mutations or spatial scales. This thesis uses the Model of Educational Reconstruction (MER) as the guiding framework for exploring the significance of threshold concepts by analysing the conceptual content of students’ explanations and extant visualizations of natural selection. MER combines scientific content with teaching and learning perspectives for the analysis and design of learning environments. Content analysis of visualizations available online showed that most fail to fully represent the basic principles of natural selection (variation, selection and inheritance). Moreover, the representational potential of visualizations was seldom used to represent threshold concepts such as randomness in origin of variation. Visualizations were also biased to animals as the context of evolution. Similarly, upper-secondary and tertiary students’ explanations of natural selection were seldom complete in terms of the basic principles and threshold concepts such as randomness were often lacking. Especially significant was the almost complete lack of randomness in upper-secondary students’ explanations. In addition, threshold concepts were context-sensitive across the items used (bacteria, cheetah and salamander), for example spatial scale and randomness was significantly more common in responses to the bacteria item compared to the cheetah and salamander items. Considering the results from these studies, three interactive visualizations were developed (evolution of antibiotic resistance and fur colouration in mice). The visualization design was conducted iteratively following a Design-Based Research approach and evaluated in classroom settings in secondary and upper-secondary Swedish schools. The results showed that visualizations targeting randomness and genetic level events such as mutations can guide students towards a more scientific conception of natural selection. However, there were differences across the visualizations and student samples. In addition, while students often inferred randomness from the visuals, the results showed that integration of randomness into explanations of natural selection may be challenging. Hence, future research should explore the role of guidance and reflection for students understanding of randomness. The thesis also discusses the role of students’ intuitive conceptions in relation to the use of interactive visualizations and how these preconceptions interact with the presented message. By using the theory of frame semantics, framing effects and conceptual integration, students’ issues of achieving an accurate understanding of evolution are discussed in relation to the theory of conceptual change. Implications for teaching and learning natural selection as well as visualization design for learning are also discussed. Evolutionsteorin förs ofta fram som biologins förenande teori. Vikten av en korrekt och användbar evolutionsförståelse har därför ofta betonats, inte minst för elevers förståelse inom biologins olika delområden men också för att fatta beslut i samhällsfrågor som exempelvis antibiotikaresistens. Många av de centrala delarna av evolutionsteorin är kontraintuitiva eller abstrakta och decennier av forskning har visat att elever har svårigheter att förstå evolutionära processer som mutation och naturligt urval. Representationer såsom visualiseringar, modeller och simuleringar är därför viktiga för att ge elever direkta erfarenheter av evolutionära processer. Även om vikten av visualiseringar är allmänt accepterad inom naturvetenskapsundervisning så är det mindre känt hur visualiseringars utformning specifikt bidrar till att utveckla elevers förståelse av vetenskapliga fenomen såsom evolution. Dessutom har forskningen på elevers evolutionsförståelse till stor del fokuserat på så kallade nyckelbegrepp (variation, selektion och arv) som härletts från vetenskapliga beskrivningar av evolutionsteorin. Dessa begrepp antas vara nödvändiga men också tillräckliga för elevers evolutionsförståelse. Dock har vikten av icke domänspecifika begrepp kopplade till evolutionsteorin, såsom slump, sannolikhet, spatial och temporala skalor (så kallade tröskelbegrepp), inte undersökts i någon högre grad. Den här avhandlingen använder Model of Educational Reconstruction för att utforska betydelsen av tröskelbegrepp för evolutionsförståelse. Med utgångspunkt i den vetenskapliga beskrivningen och historiken undersöks förekomsten av tröskelbegrepp i befintliga visualiseringar för lärande samt elevers förklaringar för att formulera designprinciper för interaktiva visualiseringar av evolution. Dessutom beskrivs utvecklingen av ett antal interaktiva visualiseringar samt undersökningar av deras potentiella användning i klassrumsmiljöer. Avhandlingen diskuterar även betydelsen av elevers intuitiva föreställningar i relation till användandet av interaktiva visualiseringar och hur dessa föreställningar interagerar med det presenterade budskapet. Genom användning av ramsemantisk teori inklusive ”framingeffekter” och ”blendteori” diskuteras elevers svårigheter och utveckling av en vetenskaplig evolutionsförståelse i relation till tidigare teorier om begreppsförändring. Konsekvenser av ”ramsemantisk teori” och ”framingeffekter” i visuella medier diskuteras även i relation till visuell design för lärande.