Over the past 50 years there has been much research in the area of students’ misconceptions. Whilst
this research has been useful in helping to inform the design of instructional approaches and
curriculum development it has not provided much insight into how students reason when presented with
a novel situation and, in particular, the knowledge they draw upon in an attempt to make predictions
about that novel situation. This article reports on a study of Greek students, aged from 10 to 17
years old, who were asked to make predictions in novel situations and to then provide, without being
told whether their predictions were correct or incorrect, explanations about their predictions.
Indeed, their explanations in such novel situations have the potential to reveal how their ideas, as
articulated as predictions, are formed as well as the sources they draw upon to make those
predictions. We also consider in this article the extent to which student ideas can be se…