• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.697-709
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• 2001

Researchers on conceptual change have been proposed that confronting a cognitive conflict situation would be important for a student to change his/her preexisting conception. There have been reported that there are three different methods of producing a cognitive conflict situation; the first is logical argument(LC), the second is demonstration of an actual phenomenon(DC), and the third is kinesthetic conflict which is a kind of physical experience(EC). In this study, the researcher tried to find out the differences in the conceptual changes by the three different conflict situations. Seventy two high school students were chosen in a high school in Kyungkido, Korea. The students were tested four times; pretest, posttest, one week delayed posttest, and one month delayed posttest. Six different test situations on mechanics were developed for this study. Test item for each situation was developed. Each item consisted of a multiple choice question and explanation of the choice. The result showed a clear differences among the three conflict groups. In general, kinesthetic conflict which is a kind of physical experience(EC) was proved to be the most efficient strategy for the conceptual change; however, logical argument(LC) seemed to be the least efficient. However, the effectiveness was not uniform from situation to situation. Results of some items showed that even the LC was quite good for the conceptual change. Therefore, it seems to be important to develope appropriate method for the target concept.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.583-594
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• 2005

This study examined 8th-graders' conceptions of force on a simple pendulum and investigated cognitive conflict and conceptual change through kinesthetic experience in swing. Participants of this study were guided to anticipate the direction of total force acting on a pendulum at three critical positions and observed it through swing experience. Having completed this, students read an article explaining the results they observed. Most of them considered gravity, tension, and motion-force to be the real forces acting on a pendulum in pre-test. Though they were interested in the activity and conceded their expectations to be different from observed results, the degrees of their cognitive conflict were not significantly high. In summation, 'interest' was the highest and 'anxiety' was the lowest. Most of the students memorized the direction of forces on a swing, but few could explain the reason behind the occurrence in an immediate post-test and delayed post-test.