Conceptual Change through the Lens of Newtonian Mechanics

Throughout its long history, the conceptual change literature assumed that student "misconceptions" in mechanics have been formed prior to instruction. As an attempt to shed light on conceptual change, this paper examines some of the trends in the literature and argues that misconceptions may be spontaneous rather than preformed, that schema theory may be the most appropriate theory to take into account this spontaneity, that misconceptions should also be viewed through the lens of the subject as a system of well-defined concepts and that any conceptual change model may have to be prescriptive and engage the student with a meta-discourse concerning the abstract nature of the subject.