The Knowledge Integration Perspective on Learning and Instruction

The knowledge integration perspective synthesizes recent investigations of science learning and instruction, culminating in a set of design patterns that promote coherent and cohesive understanding, and design principles that guide customization of patterns.

Abstract

The knowledge integration perspective emerged from studies of the conceptions of scientific phenomena that students bring to science class, from design studies refining science instruction, and from longitudinal studies of students' learning over weeks, months, and years. These studies stress that learners grapple with multiple, conflicting, and often confusing, ideas about scientific phenomena. They characterize learners as developing a repertoire of ideas, adding new ideas from instruction, experience, or social interactions, sorting out these ideas in varied contexts, making connections among ideas at multiple levels of analysis, developing more and more nuanced criteria for evaluating ideas, and formulating an increasingly linked set of views about any phenomenon.