International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change

In this chapter, we review the evidence that elementary-school students need to make major conceptual changes to develop a sound macroscopic understanding of matter that in turn supports understanding the atomic–molecular theory in middle school. We place the development of these ideas within the broader context of a learning progression for matter, whose beginning lies in infants’ concepts of object and non-solids. We argue that this learning progression encompasses fundamental changes in a broad network of concepts – not only matter and substance, but also weight, volume, density, solid, liquid and gas – whose depth and scope have not always been clearly recognized by the science education community. Those…