As educators, one of our most salient goals is to find teaching strategies that effectively facilitate students’ learning. As such, researchers often look for general trends or key axioms of learning that can help inform teaching methods (Ling, 2012). In an extensive meta-analysis, Donovan et al. (1999) identified three critical learning principles that consistently appeared among a range of educational theories—the most prevalent being that students come to the classroom with previously constructed notions of how the world works. This principle is recognised in many different learning theories, such as Constructivism and Experiential Learning (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006), as well as various assessment frameworks (Earl, 2012). So, why is it so important for educators to be aware of their students’ prior knowledge? In fact there are many reasons, from student motivation to the construction of fair assessment practices. Here, however, I will be focusing on the fact that students’ preconceived notions of how different phenomena operate are often inconsistent with the concepts educators intend to teach. In other words, students’ misconceptions based on past experiences can act as significant barriers to learning (Ling, 2012). For example, if a person repeatedly witnesses bulls charging matadors, whom are waving red capes, that person may develop the notion that the colour red incites anger in bulls. However, bulls are dichromatic and cannot discern the colour of the cape, it is merely the presence of the matador that encourages the bulls to charge (Grandin, 2000). For a person who has experienced bull fights, the latter concept may be hard to acquire, especially if it is presented in an unintelligible manner. Similarly, the challenge for educators is to change students’ fundamental understanding of a phenomenon, thereby resolving their misconception.

It is not just the students’ prior knowledge that acts as a barrier to learning in the classroom. In most cases, a teacher’s educational background will afford them a much deeper understanding of the subject matter than the students. This means that teachers will have developed a natural way of seeing a phenomenon that students cannot understand. If the teacher is unable to relate their knowledge to the students, then the teacher’s intended learning outcome can be very different than the students’ realized learning outcome (Ling, 2012). For example, a teacher believes—given his understanding of evolution— that he has accurately described Darwinian fitness. He does so by explaining that larger individuals often outcompete smaller individuals to secure more matings, resulting in an increase in the frequency of alleles for ‘large body size’ in the population. The students, however, interpret this to mean that Darwinian fitness is similar to physical fitness, in that an individual can increase its strength through exercise and then pass on alleles for ‘strength’ to their offspring. In this case, the students have developed the misconception that Darwinian fitness is equivalent to physical fitness. This example demonstrates that teaching and learning do not have a causal relationship; just because a teacher teaches does not mean that students learn (Ling, 2012). If, when constructing lessons, teachers do not consider possible misalignments between their prior knowledge and that of their students’, it is likely that the students’ realized learning outcome will not reflect the teacher’s intended learning outcome. This too lends to the development of misconceptions.

What can teachers do to mitigate or prevent misconceptions resulting from prior knowledge (both their own and the students’)? While many educational theories recognize the importance of identifying students’ prior knowledge, they do not provide practical strategies to address the existence and development of students’ misconceptions. Hewson and Hewson (1984), argued that if students are able to identify conflict between their personally held conceptions—referred to as “alternative conceptions”—and the accepted view that their teachers present, then they are able to see inadequacies in their pre-existing knowledge. At the same time, Hewson and Hewson (1984) suggest that if the conflict goes unresolved, it will act as a significant barrier to learning. In their original research, Hewson and Hewson (1984), identify multiple strategies for promoting conceptual change through explicitly addressing alternative conceptions. However, teachers often argued that addressing alternative or “incorrect” concepts was difficult, confusing, and a waste of valuable class time (Murray, 1983). The lack of a theoretical learning framework to support the use of conceptual conflict prevented teachers from identifying and addressing students’ alternative conceptions. Furthermore, once students were taught the correct view, they seemed capable of reciting the appropriate information during assessments. The problem is that alternative conceptions are often deeply held and even if students are able to temporarily learn and communicate the correct information, they will revert back to their original way of thinking outside of the classroom (Hewson and Hewson, 1984). In such cases, it is difficult to assert that the student has truly learned the concept because their misconception persists.

More recently, the research team of Ference Marton at Götberg University has developed Variation Theory (VT), a theoretical learning model that suggests that learning only truly occurs once educators fundamentally change the way their students perceive a phenomenon (Marton & Trigwell, 2000). To use the language of VT, teachers must change their students “way of seeing” (Ling, 2012). To do this, teachers need to identify their students’ prior knowledge, as well as their own “natural attitude” or way of seeing a particular phenomenon (Ling, 2012). Once an educator recognizes the discrepancies between their way of seeing and their students way of seeing a phenomenon, they can focus on the presentation of new material that addresses students’ misconceptions. Although VT is firmly rooted in the psychology of learning, Marton and other proponents have made several attempts to provide a practical framework for the application of VT in classrooms (e.g. Pang and Marton, 2003; Pang, Linder & Fraser, 2006). This framework requires presenting students with clear patterns of variation that allow them to discern the critical features of an object of learning and, in doing so, fundamentally changes the students’ understanding of a phenomenon. Though it has not been explicitly described in the educational literature, I argue that VT supports the use of conceptual conflict and can be extended to provide the ideal practical framework to promote conceptual change. In the rest of this paper I will:

• clearly define the language of VT;
• explain VT in the context of conceptual conflict and conceptual change;
• compare and contrast VT with alternative models for conceptual change; and
• summarize my research findings.