When children and adults are exposed to scientific knowledge (in education), their conceptions of various phenomena in a domain undergo - or at least are hoped to undergo - a restructuring process that leads from commonsense belief (naive physics, folk biology, folk psychology) to scientific conceptions. When this reorganization is comprehensive enough to constitute a wholesale reworking of one's ontological commitments, inferential practices, or the domain and standards of explanation it is called conceptual change.
One approach to modeling the process of conceptual change treats conceptual frameworks as systems of (explicitly or implicitly endorsed) constraints on the generation of explanations and inferences and situational mental representations ("mental models", cf. e.g. Stella Vosniadou et al.). From this perspective, learning and conceptual change are represented as placing additional constraints,or lifting existing constraints on one's knowledge and reasoning. Such learning tasks can be represented as a constraint satisfaction problems (Paul Thagard et al.).
In this seminar, conceptual change in various doains will be explored in the framework of Paul Thagard's Theory of Explanatory Coherence (TEC) which has been implemented as a constraint-satisfaction algorithm ECHO.
In the course of the seminar the participants will:
acquaint themselves with selected topics in psychological and educational research on conceptual change
gain an understanding of constraint satisfaction problems and representation of conceptual change as a solution to a constraint satisfaction problem
implement a simple model of conceptual change in some domain in ECHO
In fulfillment of course requirement it is required that participants:
read the assigned materials
are present in all seminar meetings (see Schedule, below)
write summaries of meetings and their learning experience ("oppimispäiväkirja")
implement a model of conceptual change in ECHO*
ECHO software may be freely downloaded from P.Thagard's homepage. To run it on your own computer you need to install a LISP interpreter. A computer with LISP to run your own model is also available at the cognitive science unit. (You can use any ASCII text editor such as Notepad to write your own datafile).
No programming experience is required, but for some of the assigned articles participants should be familiar with elementary propositional logic and set theory.
The seminar starts on Thu 5th November, 10am.
Teacher: Otto Lappi, Cognitive Science
Thagard, P. (1992). Conceptual Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Ch1-3, pp.1-100)
Textbook treatment of constraint satisfaction
Russell, S. & Norvig, P. (2006), Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (AIMA), 2nd ed. (ch.5, pp 137-160) available at the book's homepage
Conceptual Change
Chi, M., T.H. (1992). Conceptual Change within and across Ontological Categories: Examples from Learning an Discovery in Science. In R. Giere (Ed.), Cognitive Models of Science. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 129-186.
Chi, M., T.H., & Roscoe, R. D. (2002). The Processes and Challenges of Conceptual Change. In M. Limon & L. Mason (Eds.), Reconsidering Conceptual Change. Issues in Theory and Practice (pp. 3-27). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Hewson, P. W., & Hewson, M. G. A. B. (1984). The role of conceptual conflict in conceptual change and the design of science instruction. Instructional Science, 13(1), 1-13.
DiSessa, A. A. (1993). Toward an Epistemology of Physics. Cognition and Instruction, 10(2 & 3), 105-225.
Slotta, J. D., Chi, M., T.H., & Joram, E. (1995). Assessing Students Misclassifications of Physics Concepts: An Ontological Basis for Conceptual Change. Cognition and Instruction, 13(3), 373-400.
Vosniadou, S. (1992). Mental Models of the Earth: A study of Conceptual Change in Childhood. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 535-585.
Vosniadou, S. (1994). Capturing and Modeling the Process of Conceptual Change. Learning and Instruction, 4, 45-69.
Coherence & Constraint Satisfaction
Nowak, G., & Thagard, P. (1992a). Copernicus, Ptolemy, and explanatory coherence. In R. N. Giere (Ed.), Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science, volume 15: Cognitive models of science (pp. 271-309). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Thagard, P., & Verbeurgt, K. Coherence as constraint satisfaction. Cognitive Science, 22(1), 1-24.