Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Students' naive conceptions of natural phenomena have been analogized to scientific theories. This theory view does not account for the instability and inconsistency of students' explanations. A n alternative is the schema view according to which students construct explanations by instantiating explanatory patterns acquired in previous learning. In two previous studies eight explanatory schemas for evolutionary change were identified through content analysis of students' explanations. It was hypothesized that if the schemas have cognitive reality, data from explanation tasks ought be consistent with data from recognition tasks. In this study students were asked to sort 24 explanations that exemplified the eight different schemas in three different ways. A hierarchical cluster analysis shows that half of the students recognized five schemas and merged the remaining ones into one broader explanatory pattem, giving partial support for the schema view. ImpHcations of the schema view for the learning of scientific ideas are discussed.