Liza Haglund

Conceptions and Contexts : On the Interpretation of Interview and Observational Data

Abstract Research within a constructivist approach often relies on interview data, which are used to reveal beliefs held by the interviewee or to expose conceptions or conceptual structures that are supposed to reside within the interviewee. From a sociocultural perspective, severe criticism has been leveled against the neglect of the problems of inferring conceptions held by a participant from what is uttered in an interview. Utterances should be looked upon as cultural tools used to realize discursive practices, rather than as propositions mirroring mental entities. It is argued that the clinical interview, often used by constructivists, disregards the impact of a situation and discursive norms with regard to what is uttered in a conversation. Here, it is argued that by taking into account an interviewees conceptions of the situation, as well as of the subject matter being talked about, some sort of a bridge between the methodological standpoints of constructivism and sociocultural theory can be formed. It is proposed that utterances should be regarded as actions, and thus the problem of ascribing meanings to behavior is in focus, that is, how a series of behaviors can be regarded as an intentional action. It is argued that by means of such an approach, it is possible to make inferences about conceptions and conceptual structures much in the same way as is done in research on conceptual change. However, this means that utterances cannot just be “read off.” The interviewees aims, conceptions of the subject matter talked about, as well as the interviewees conceptions of the situation to hand must be taken into account. A reinterpretation of data reported by Andrea diSessa and Bruce Sherin is used as an illustration.

Situating the Question of Conceptual Change

The contemporary debate regarding the question of conceptual change relates to the learning paradox in Plato’s dialogue Menon, where Menon asks how it is possible to engage in a search for knowledge of something entirely new. How is it possible to change from a commonsense view of a phenomenon into a scientific one that also sometimes goes quite contrary to the commonsense view? Sociocultural analysis dispatch the question by talking of situated cognition and by that ignoring individual cognitions. Constructivist approaches describes cognitive development as an evolution from simple naive models of a phenomenon to more complex and powerful models, often by implying that the simple models are abandoned in favour of the new ones. Here, another model for conceptual development and conceptual change will be advanced. It is proposed that conceptual development and conceptual change is constituted by a process of a continuous assimilation of new information into an all-embracing model and, simultaneously, a differentiation within this compounded model resulting eventually in different new models. This description that stick to the Piagetian way of describing cognitive development, will be illustrated by means of empirical data from a study of children’s conceptions of the shape of the earth.