Wow, this study published in Cognition and Instruction has been in the making for a long time and I am so proud of it: What happens when learners make meaning with, and express conflicting notions of, gravity, space, and time? Rolf Steier and I explore conceptual challenges with gravity and spacetime in general relativity.
To unpack these challenges, we draw on the concept of imagination and on theoretical perspectives that treat imagining as a social activity. We present the concept of metaimagining to characterize layered processes in which learners attend to and manage shifts between their own imaginative activities.
We also show how general relativity presents particular challenges to student meaning making of abstract concepts which in turn prompt metaimagining. Find our paper here. You can also download the accepted author version if you don't have access to the journal.
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