Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education (한국과학교육학회지)

The Korean Association for Science Education (한국과학교육학회)
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Cognitive Conflict and Causal Attributions to Successful Conceptual Change in Physics Learning

  • Published : 2004.08.30
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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between cognitive conflict and students' causal attributions and to find out what kinds of attributions affect successful resolution of cognitive conflict in learning physics. Twenty-nine college students who attended a base general physics course took an attribution test and a conceptual pretest related to action and reaction concept. Of these, twenty students who revealed alternative conceptions were selected. They were confronted with a discrepant demonstration and took part in the cognitive conflict level test, a posttest, and delayed posttest. Those students who experienced high levels of cognitive conflict were selected and interviewed to find out what kinds of attributions affect resolving the conflict. When confronted with the discrepant event, the students who attributed success outcomes to "effort" experienced higher levels of cognitive conflict than those to "task difficulty." However, those students who revealed high levels of cognitive conflict and attributed success outcomes to effort did not always produce conceptual change. They had different perspectives on effort and conducted different effort activities to resolve the cognitive conflict. In addition, these effort activities appeared to include their motivational beliefs, metacognitive and volitional strategies. The results of this study indicate that in order for the conflicts to lead to change, students need to have the perspective on effort implying the use of the self-regulated learning strategy and to conduct effort activities based on them. Beyond cold conceptual change, this article suggests that there is a management strategy of cognitive conflict in the classroom context.

Keywords

References

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