The Importance of Fostering Conceptual Reframing in Chemistry Education

Abstract

Persistent difficulties in students’ ability to apply chemical knowledge across contexts suggest limits not to memory but of cognitive flexibility. This paper argues that such flexibility depends on conceptual reframing, understood as the capacity to reinterpret a phenomenon through alternative disciplinary lenses, which in this study take the form of distinct conceptual lenses within chemistry. Drawing on insights from cognitive flexibility theory, epistemic cognition, and philosophy of science, I propose that chemistry’s inherently pluralistic structure requires learners to navigate among multiple legitimate modes of reasoning. I describe conceptual reframing as the cognitive process that enables this navigation and link it to mechanisms of context-sensitive activation and conceptual coordination. Building on existing ideas in science and chemistry education, I present curricular and pedagogical suggestions that emphasize recursive, phenomenon-based learning and metacognitive engagement with framing choices. Illustrative examples, such as the teaching of acid–base chemistry, demonstrate how instruction can foster conceptual reframing and knowledge transfer across contexts. Cultivating such pluralistic reasoning, I argue, is key to preparing learners to think adaptively, critically, and reflectively in a complex, interconnected world.