Advances in Engineering Education - Issue 3 - Opinion: Lessons from the ‘Misinformation Age’: Proposing a Socially-Embedded Approach to Foster Conceptual Change

Oct 15, 2026

Engineering educators aim to help students align their understanding with scientifically accepted explanations, especially for difficult and counterintuitive concepts. Traditionally, conceptual change is framed as students being logically convinced of a valid scientific account. This opinion introduces a socially embedded perspective, emphasizing how learners’ group affiliations shape conceptual change. The argument reframes conceptual change as not purely cognitive, but also fundamentally social in nature.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time18 min

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Opinion: Lessons from the ‘Misinformation Age’: Proposing a Socially-Embedded Approach to Foster Conceptual Change

Introduction

Conceptual Change Research

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2022: VOLUME 10 ISSUE 3 DOI: 10.18260/3-1-1153-36030 Opinion: Lessons from the ‘Misinformation Age’: Proposing a Socially-Embedded Approach to Foster Conceptual Change ABSTRACT Engineering educators strive to help students understand concepts that may be difficult and counterintuitive. This often entails helping students bring their understanding of how a phenomenon works into alignment with the scientifically-accepted explanation. For the most part, fostering conceptual change has been thought of as a process of logically convincing students of the validity of the scientifically-accepted explanation. This piece introduces a socially-embedded view of conceptual change that takes into account the impact of the group affiliation of the learner. It is suggested that conceptual change is not a wholly cognitive process, but rather one that is also social in nature. INTRODUCTION We live in an age when different groups of people hold opposing views about a variety of important issues. What one group asserts as a “fact”, an opposing group labels as “misinformation” and viceversa. Both groups tenaciously hold on to their own views of reality and remain unmoved by any of the opposing side’s arguments, and we have seen (at least virtually) confrontations escalating into violence. We are left wondering: “What is going on here? Why are these beliefs so deeply and strongly held? And why are they so difficult to change?” Educators have posed similar questions about students’understanding of difficult STEM concepts.“Why”, educators ask,“are some conceptions about STEM concepts so difficult to change?” Education researchers, when posing this question, call their efforts“fostering conceptual change”. I propose that we consider our current information-misinformation divide as a case study of conceptual change “in the wild”. How might what we are learning from conceptual change in the wild be applied to conceptual change in the classroom? In this Opinion piece, I will share my speculations about this question. It is meant as a way to begin to share my ideas, and should not be perceived as a thorough thesis about the topic. Nonetheless, these early speculations could spur a useful discussion about classroom practices. I begin this piece with a brief summary of conceptual change research, then draw parallels to explanations about the spread of alternate beliefs, and end with implications for educators. 2 2022: VOLUME 10 ISSUE 3 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION Opinion: Lessons from the ‘Misinformation Age’: Proposing a Socially-Embedded Approach to Foster Conceptual Change CONCEPTUAL CHANGE RESEARCH The discussion of conceptual change research should begin, I feel, with Thomas Kuhn’s classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1962) . Here, Kuhn used examples from the history of science to present a framework for how scientific revolutions occur – switching from “normal science” – where progress is incremental, to a “revolution” where a paradigm shift within the community brings about a new understanding of a phenomenon. Kuhn posited that a shift in community understanding comes about when new data could no longer be explained by current theory and anew theory was accepted if it was deemed intelligible (or understandable), plausible, and fruitful (or suggesting new lines of research) . In the early 1980’s Posner and colleagues posited that conceptual change for an individual learner also follows a similar progression. Posner et al. (1981) argued that to undergo conceptual change, a learner comes to a logical conclusion that a new theory or concept is intelligible, plausible, and fruitful.“Our central commitment … is that learning is a rational activity. That is, learning is fundamentally coming to comprehend and accept ideas because they are seen as intelligible and rational.” (

FAQs

What problem in engineering education does the article focus on?

The article focuses on helping students understand concepts that are difficult and counterintuitive, and on aligning students’ explanations with scientifically accepted accounts.

How does the article view conceptual change compared with traditional approaches?

It argues that conceptual change is not only a rational, cognitive process of persuasion by evidence, but also social, shaped by learners’ group affiliations.

What foundational research does the article use to describe conceptual change?

It reviews Thomas Kuhn’s framework for scientific revolutions and related individual conceptual change theories, including work by Posner and colleagues, and concept-specific change types discussed by Chi.

Oct 15, 2026

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