The Special Interest Group "Conceptual Change" brings together researchers from the fields of education, cognitive and developmental psychology and several others with the purpose of investigating the problem of conceptual change in development, learning, and instruction. Research on conceptual change has provided detailed descriptions and explanations of learners' difficulties in diverse areas, such as physics, mathematics, biology and history. Under the common denominator of the conceptual change approach to learning, several theoretical assumptions have served as a source of hypotheses and have guided rich and fruitful research agendas. The SIG has been exploring the possibility to synthesize constructivist and socio-cultural perspectives on learning and to investigate the effect of epistemological beliefs and ‘hot cognition' factors on conceptual change learning. The implications of research on conceptual change in the design of instruction are currently among the priorities of the SIG.
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