Writing and conceptual change. What changes ?

This study was focused on elementary school students' processes of scientif ic understanding within a classroom environment characterized as a communit y of discourse. In particular, it explored the role of written discourse bo th on the plane of knowledge development and the conceptualization and eval uation of the writing activity itself. The purposes of the study were: (a) to see whether students could use writing as a means to express and compare ideas, reason and reflect on them in the process of scientific understandi ng; (b) to see whether writing in the service of learning facilitated the u nderstanding of the new topic through conceptual change; (c) to see whether writing affected the conceptualization of the writing activity itself. Thi rty-six fourth graders divided in two groups, experimental (writing) and co ntrol (no-writing), were involved in the implementation of curriculum units on plants, whose target concept was photosynthesis. The findings show that in the experimental group the students reached a better conceptual underst anding of the target concept and more advanced metaconceptual awareness of the changes in their own knowledge structures. Moreover, the conceptualizat ion of the writing activity seemed to change as well to some extent as writ ing in a conceptual change process affected the ways learners viewed some f unctions of it.