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configurations that are more stable. Forces act between the charges to bring about
lower energy arrangements.
Alternative ideas have been reported across the sciences, so student understand-
ing of the solar system may fare no better than their understanding of the atom. As
one example, it is common for youngsters to associate summer and winter with the
Earth being at its closest and furthest positions from the Sun in its orbit (Hsu, Wu, &
Hwang, 2008). If this were the case, both hemispheres should experience seasons
in phase. The scientific model is related to the Earth's angle of tilt compared to the
plane of its orbit around the Sun. When the Southern hemisphere is leaning towards
the Sun it undergoes summer, but it is simultaneously winter in the Northern hemi-
sphere that is leaning away. This offers the possibility of celebrating Christmas with
snow in the North and beach barbeques in Australia.
The Uncertain Nature of Students' Alternative Ideas
Initially, the research programme into learners' ideas in science proved very fruit-
ful, as researchers around the world started cataloguing common ideas elicited
from students of different ages about various science topics. However the research
effort was somewhat undermined by confused notions of what these ideas rep-
resented, and how best to describe and label them. References to the objects of
enquiry being found in students' conceptual or cognitive structures (White, 1985)
offered an impression of a clear ontological basis for the research, but often stud-
ies were undertaken with limited thought to the exact nature of what was being
elicited.
So some researchers reported intuitive theories that were largely tacit, and
only made explicit when students were asked to verbalise their thinking. Other
researchers reported alternative conceptions that took the form of explicit proposi-
tional knowledge. Some researchers claimed that such alternative conceptions were
tenacious and highly resistant to being changed by instruction; where others saw
misconceptions that could be readily corrected once identified. Some researchers
referred to mini-theories that had very restricted ranges of application; whilst oth-
ers reported alternative conceptual frameworks that were widely applied. Some
researchers saw student thinking as reflecting life-world norms, being more con-
cerned with maintaining social cohesion than reflecting rigorous analysis; where
others claimed student thinking was consistent and coherent and deserved to be
called theoretical. Such differences had the potential to undermine the research pro-
gramme, offering very different interpretations of both the significance of learners'
ideas for teaching, and of the kinds of pedagogy that might be appropriate (Taber,
2009, pp. 199-200).
Some of the differences reported could be explained—to a certain extent—by
the paradigmatic commitments and methodological choices of different researchers:
workers took different fundamental assumptions into their studies about what they
were enquiring into, and selected different approaches to their research depending
