Effects of Cognitive Conflict Instructional Strategy on Students’ Conceptual Change in Temperature and Heat

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy ofcognitive-conflict-based physics instruction over the traditionally designed physicsinstruction on students’ conceptual change in heat and temperature. The subjects were249 senior secondary II students from 2 schools purposively sampled from 12 secondaryschools. The 2 schools sampled had well-equipped laboratory, experienced physicsteachers, and two intact classes. One of the intact classes in each school was assignedto control group. In one school, there were 70 subjects for experimental group and 60for control group, while in the other school, there were 60 for experimental group and59 for control group. Both groups were taught by the same teacher, and this lasted for 6weeks of intensive treatment. The experimental group received cognitive-conflict-basedinstruction, while the control group received traditionally designed physicsinstruction. The instrument for obtaining the data was thermal concept evaluation (TCE).Students in both groups were pretested using TCE to establish their level of initialunderstanding of heat and temperature. At the end of the treatment, the same test wasadministered as posttest. The data generated from the TCE were analyzed using frequencyand chi-square statistics, indicating that the level of understanding of heat andtemperature was significantly dependent on the treatment. Based on the findings, somerecommendations were made