Abstract
One of the most important aspects of science teaching and learning relates to student development of conceptual scientific knowledge. According to Brown, Colin, and Duid (1989), conceptual knowledge is a function of culture and the activities of the community in which the concepts have been developed. With the development in focus towards social constructivist and sociocultural research in learning, there is a suggestion that the cognitive activities of individuals can be understood by examining the social and cultural contexts from which they are derived (Coll, France, & Taylor, 2005). The sociocultural view is that understanding science is assumed to be inherently situated with regard to cultural, historical, and institutional contexts (Packer & Goicoecha, 2000; Wertsch, 1995). This view relates to the idea of situated cognition (Hennessy, 1993). Situated cognition means that cognitive processes differ according to the domain of thinking, and the specifications of the task context (Coll et al., 2005).
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Yuenyong, C., Jones, A., Sung-Ong, S. (2011). Student Energy Conceptions. In: Cheng, M.M.H., So, W.W.M. (eds) Science Education in International Contexts. SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-427-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-427-0_1
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