A major thrust in science education research has been the study of students’ conceptions and reasoning. Many have pointed out the persistence of misconceptions, naïve conceptions, alternative conceptions, intuitive conceptions, and preconceptions. Studies have covered a wide range of subject areas in physics, in chemistry, and in biology (Thijs and van den Berg 1995).
In view of the large volume of documented instances of alternative conceptions and reasoning, a theoretical framework with explanatory and predictive power seemed to be in order. While most of the previously mentioned studies adapted a content-oriented perspective of alternative conceptions, another approach is suggested by the intuitive rules theory. The intuitive rules theory takes a task-oriented standpoint, addressing the impact of specific task characteristics on learners’ responses to scientific tasks (Stavy and Tirosh 2000). The main claim of this theory is that students tend to provide similar, intuitive...
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References
Stavy R, Tirosh D (2000) How students (mis-)understand science and mathematics: intuitive rules. Teachers College Press, New York
Stavy R, Goel V, Critchley H, Dolan R (2006) Intuitive interference in quantitative reasoning. Brain Res 1073–1074:383–388
Thijs GD, van den Berg E (1995) Cultural factors in the origin and remediation of alternative conceptions in physics. Sci Educ 4:317–347
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Stavy, R., Tirosh, D. (2014). Alternative Conceptions and Intuitive Rules. In: Gunstone, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Science Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6165-0_86-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6165-0_86-6
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