Strategies for Conceptual Change in School Science John-Paul Riordan Canterbury Christ Church University (UK) jr173@canterbury.ac.uk Abstract This study explores how experienced science teachers promote conceptual change. It examines how instructional strategies, learning tactics [1] and conceptual change interrelate. Pupils must construct new concepts while still having old ones [2]. Their evolving learning tactics are sometimes distorted by naïve techniques [3]. Three research methods (expert microteaching, verbal protocols and retrospective debriefing) were used. Data was video-recorded and managed using NVivo 9. Six 11 year-old pupils took part (three girls and three boys) in each expert microteaching interview, led by a science specialist (Advanced Skills Teacher). A ‘Concurrent Verbal Protocol and Retrospective Debriefing’ interview [4] happened with the teacher one month later. Six teachers participate altogether. All interviews were analysed using grounded theory methods [5]. The interpretivist theoretical perspective (symbolic interactionism) was underpinned by a social constructionist epistemology. Initial findings show teachers use nine ‘teaching instruments’, ten ‘skill stratagems’ and six ‘deception stratagems’. Pupils demonstrate three learning tactics. Failure (strategic friction) is also explored. What can be considered evidence is a function of the researcher’s methodological position [6]. So what constitutes reliable evidence can be contentious. Appropriate criteria for evaluating the grounded theory emerging from this study [7] were used. Interpretivist approaches for investigating conceptual change in school science are necessary to avoid unbalanced dominance by positivist literature. This approach, proved successful in other fields [4], is new to this context. The assumption that instructional strategy is straightforward [8] does not adequately explain the data collected here. However, abandoning attempts to unpick complicated interactions between pupils and teacher whilst learning takes place, leaves practitioners without guidance. Consensus exists among most conceptual change researchers that instructional strategies, learning tactics and conceptual change must be considered together where possible [9]. This present study proposes a grounded theory for how experienced science teachers promote conceptual change and questions how instructional strategy is understood in the literature. 1. Research questions How do experienced science teachers promote conceptual change in children? How are instructional strategy, learners’ reasoning tactics and conceptual change in school science related? 2. Methodology The research questions arose from my concern, as an experienced science teacher, to understand how best to support children when they express naïve concepts. This is an emergent research problem [10], a characteristic of grounded theory, which is the methodology used in this study. A