Elementary School Students' Conceptual Change through Multiple cognitive conflicts Strategy-Regarding Preconceptions about the Brightness of an Electric Bulb

다중인지갈등 상황에서 전구의 밝기에 대한 초등학생들의 사전개념 변화

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a multiple cognitive conflict strategy at remedying student's misconceptions. Elementary students have many misconceptions about the brightness of the electric bulb in simple dual circuits. Most of the misconceptions can be summed up as 'the more batteries or the fewer bulbs, the brighter is the output.' The students have learned about the brightness of the electric bulb while connected to a battery in Grade 4 and the brightness of multiple electric bulbs in Grade 5. However, about $50%$ of the students remain with the firm misconception that the brightness of the bulb is related to the number of source batteries. This strong misconception may not lead to a conceptual change in the case of only one cognitive conflict. This study used a multiple conflict strategy while tackling the cognitive conflicts in the students as they solved the problems many times. It involved 160 grade 5 students. The result was they often changed their misconceptions and used more scientific thinking than the same grade students of other schools. It remains to be seen if this success will transfer to other schools and students and we intend on studying further the differences in students regarding this learning process.