• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.798-804
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• 2006

In this study, we investigated students' responses to a discrepant event and an alternative hypothesis which had been presented in the conceptual change processes from the phlogiston theory to the oxygen theory, and compared them with scientists' responses. The data concerning scientists' responses to the discrepant event and the alternative hypothesis were gathered from the relevant literature on the history of science. Subjects were 148 eighth graders who possessed the target misconception about combustion through a preconception test. After having been presented with the discrepant event and the alternative hypothesis, students were asked to respond to the test of response to discrepant event. Although similar types of responses were obtained from both scientists and students, there was also a clear difference. Scientists tended to focus on explaining the problems of the discrepant event, whereas students tended to ignore and/or exclude the discrepant event in order to maintain their previous beliefs. Only a few students were also found to change their beliefs after having been presented with the alternative hypothesis.