Developing commonsense theories of motion: the emergence of misconceptions

How developmental psychology underpins our understanding of knowledge formation and conceptual change in early science education has been of concern for some time now, fostering a strong partnership between the two disciplines. In particular, there has long been interest in the development of knowledge that stands in conflict with accepted scientific views, often posing challenges for educational instruction. To explore this, the work presented here is a review of past and current studies I have conducted in the field of early understanding of rudimentary scientific concepts relating to the everyday world. Specific focus is placed on the construction of so-called commonsense theories of motion and the role played by object and motion dimension properties in contributing to this early conceptualization. Further, consideration is given to some of the nonverbal underpinnings of such constructions by addressing recent work into tacit knowledge and the role of relative object weight in preschool search tasks. Potential implications for educational practice are discussed, as well as relevant directions for future research.