Conceptual profile of substance: a tool to understand the heterogeneity of thinking and speech in the classroom Authors Raúl Orduña Picón University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA Hannah Sevian University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA Eduardo Fleury Mortimer Keywords: Substance, polysemy, conceptual profile, speech and thinking, heterogeneity. Abstract Conceptual profile of substance is a model that represents the diversity of ways of speaking and thinking (zones) about that concept which individuals socially develop and use in specific contexts. This paper presents the zones that constitute the conceptual profile of substance, and a proposal for how this model of heterogeneity of speech and thinking can be used to identify students’ thinking and support them in extending their ways of speaking and thinking about substance. Author Biographies Raúl Orduña Picón, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA Candidato a doctor en investigación en Educación Química por la Universidad de Massachusetts Boston e investigador especialista en la Universidad de California Irvine. Autor de artículos arbitrados de investigación en educación química. Su trabajo se centra en las múltiples formas de pensamiento de los estudiantes de ciencia. Hannah Sevian, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA Profesora-investigadora en la Universidad de Massachusetts Boston. Autora o coautora de más de cincuenta artículos arbitrados de investigación en educación química y una serie de libros de educaciónsecundaria. Su trabajo se centra en el estudio de las formas de enseñar y aprender química desde laperspectiva de la justicia social. Eduardo Fleury Mortimer Profesor de educación en la Universidad Federal de Minas Gerais e investigador del CNPQ (ConsejoNacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico). Hizo su doctorado en Educación Científica en la Universidadde São Paulo. Su investigación se centra en el aprendizaje de las ciencias, los perfiles conceptualesy el discurso en el aula. Downloads PDF (Espanyol) (Català) PDF (Spanish) PDF (Español) PDF (Espanhol) (Português) Issue No. 28 (2021) Section Monografia: Substància química License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors.On submitting articles for publication to the journal Educació Química, authors accept the following terms:Authors assign to Societat Catalana de Química (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Educació Química.Authors answer to Societat Catalana de Química for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.Societat Catalana de Química declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.Educació Química is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.