In the perspective of the Model of Educational Reconstruction, designing new educational path
require to gain new information on how students face the specific subject explored. At the PERG
of Udine the main steps of the new educational paths were explored with pupils engaged in
Conceptual Laboratory of Operative Exploration (CLOE) in informal learning contexts, where
using different monitoring tools student spontaneous ideas as well their learning paths were
explored and stimulated. In CLOE pupils discuss everyday life scenarios, recover their everyday
and sensorial knowledge, as well as involve them in the challenges of explorations according to
an IBL strategies. The CLOE lab are research based proposals of learning where explore how
pupils build formal thinking, reflect on phenomena and construct models, reinterpret common
everyday knowledge. The research focus is on the reasoning sequence, the ways in which
knowledge is structured, the development of interpretative representations. The design
characteristic of the CLOE labs are presented exemplifying it in the case of the CLOE on energy
