Reflections on a fifth‐grade life science lesson: making sense of children's understanding of scientific models

In this study a teaching/research collaboration between a fifth‐grade teacher and a university science educator was implemented to examine conceptual change teaching and learning. The authors reflected on one classroom lesson to better understand their own teaching and student sense‐making about trophic relations in a terrarium community. Many children thought the pyramid model of trophic levels represented space needs of the organisms rather than energy relationships. Yet when the authors, as teachers, abandoned the scientific model and allowed students to construct their own, it was found that they did have reasonable ideas about number relationships in a community. It was also learned that, even with strong philosophical commitments to conceptual change teaching, teaching behaviours were sometimes in conflict with teachers’ beliefs. The findings have implications for teacher education and indicate that more work is needed to understand and elucidate conceptual change teaching strategies that will help children see scientific models and concepts as intelligible alternatives to their own ideas.