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The role of instructional variables in conceptual change in high school physics topics
Author(s) -
Hynd Cynthia R.,
McWhorter J. Yevette,
Phares Virginia L.,
Suttles C. William
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of research in science teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.067
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1098-2736
pISSN - 0022-4308
DOI - 10.1002/tea.3660310908
Subject(s) - conceptual change , mathematics education , motion (physics) , concept learning , science education , ninth , reading (process) , psychology , computer science , physics , artificial intelligence , acoustics , political science , law
This study was conducted to determine the effect of three variables on conceptual change in physics. Ninth and 10th‐grade students who, despite instruction, still held nonscientific intuitive ideas about the motion of objects participated in viewing a demonstration, engaged in student‐to‐student discussion, and/or read a refutational text about Newton's laws of motion. Students ( N = 310) were randomly assigned within classes to eight groups representing combinations of the three activities and participated in pretesting, instruction, and posttesting. Posttest results revealed that reading the refutational text helped students change their intuitive ideas to scientific ones, while seeing a demonstration affected how students interacted with group and text on some measures. Discussing ideas in a group did not lead to significant learning of scientific notions but, rather, caused students to be less influenced by either the demonstration or the text.