Conceptual Change: A Special Issue of the Journal of the Learning Sciences

Conceptual change continues to be a central concern of many of the disciplines that participate in the learning sciences. In this special issue, conceptual change is studied from a variety of perspectives,

* Cognitive development -- concerning the nature of children's concepts, how they relate to adult concepts, and how they develop.
* Philosophical and historical research -- investigating how new conceptual structures are constructed in a scientific community, how they replace existing ones, and the implications of conceptual change for understanding the nature and development of scientific knowledge.
* Research in science learning -- dealing with the nature of students' intuitive concepts and the role they play in impeding or facilitating learning a science, and with developing pedagogical strategies to promote the change from intuitive to scientific understanding.
* Artificial intelligence research -- creating computational models of conceptual and representational change.

In all of these fields, there is considerable debate as to what constitutes conceptual change and how significant it is to understanding development, science, and learning. This special issue brings together a variety of perspectives and approaches addressing common fundamental problems of conceptual what it is, how it occurs, and how to facilitate it. To represent these perspectives, an interdisciplinary team of cognitive scientists served as editors -- a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence (Ram), a philosopher and scientific historian (Nersessian), and a development psychologist (Keil) -- and were supported by the editorial board and reviewers of this journal who specialize in learning and education. The end result is informative on many different levels. Together, these papers provide valuable insights into psychological, philosophical, educational, and computational issues in the study of conceptual change, and discuss the implications of the analyses for understanding the fundamental nature and processes of conceptual change.