Abstract
Many instructional approaches to conceptual change in science aim to promote conceptual change through inquiry. By inquiry, we refer to practices of developing and/or evaluating conceptions based on evidence (National Research Council, 1996). Inquiry approaches to conceptual change encourage students to develop and adopt scientific concepts through the use of evidence. For example, students who think that matter can be created out of nothing or destroyed may be placed in an inquiry environment in which they design experiments and gather data to investigate whether various kinds of physical, state, and chemical changes produce changes in mass. The designers of this inquiry environment hope that, through their investigations, learners will conclude that mass and matter are conserved during ordinary physical and chemical changes, thus adopting a very different conception of matter.