A review of the constructivist research in the last decades: spontaneous reasoning, conceptual change and science education

The constructivist approach in Science Education became a strong influence in the middle of the 70s, with a great emphasis on investigating students' conceptions of a variety of science contents. The attempts to take these results into the science classes originated the research on conceptual change followed by many studies that are still today trying to interfere in classroom teaching. In this chapter we look for presenting some research about spontaneous reasoning in physics carried out in Brazil in that period and to review the main research that followed the pioneer paper on conceptual change published by Posner and his collaborators.

Keywords:
Constructivism; spontaneous reasoning; conceptual change; science teaching.