Preservice elementary school teachers' conceptual change about projectile motion: Refutation text, demonstration, affective factors, and relevance

Abstract

This study investigates changes in preservice teachers' conceptions about projectile motion brought about by a combination of reading and demonstration and an appeal to usefulness. Participants were either told in advance they were expected to teach a videotaped lesson on projectile motion or that information was withheld. In addition, teachers either participated in a combined demonstration -text or in a text-only group. We randomly assigned 73 preservice teachers with nonscientific conceptions to one of four groups comprised of the two levels of the two conditions (Told/Not Told, Demo -Text/Text only) and documented conceptual change through short-answer, true/false, and application tasks. Additional data were obtained from an interview questionnaire to determine the influence of preservice teachers' attitudes and experiences on conceptual change. Furthermore, the videotapes and transcriptions of 16 videotaped lessons and postlesson, structured interviews were analyzed to provide information about the interaction of variables producing change and to track the changes in thinking that were made. The results indicated the effectiveness of a combined Demo -Text condition on immediate posttests and effectiveness of text in producing long-term change. Descriptive and qualitative analyses indicated an interaction of instructional, motivational, and knowledge factors; provided evidence that conceptual change proceeds in a piecemeal fashion; and documented that restructuring of knowledge may lead to new nonscientific conceptions.

Dynamising conceptual change approach to teach some genetics concepts/Genetik Kavramlarının Öğretiminde Kavramsal Değişim Yaklaşımının Etkinliğinin Arttırılması

“…As hypothesized, the conceptual change texts, analogies and animated videos combination did lead to better conceptual understanding of related genetic concepts. These results support the findings of former studies in which text-based conceptual change approach can facilitate learning of scientific concepts (Chambers & Andre, 1997;Hynd, Alvermann, & Qian, 1997;Sungur, Tekkaya & Geban, 2001;Cakir et al, 2002;Alparslan, Tekkaya & Geban, 2003;Pekel, 2005;Pinarbasi et al, 2006;Beerenwinkel et al, 2011), importance of analogies (Stavy, 1991;Dagher 1994;Durkin & Barber, 2002;Canpolat et al, 2006;Çetingül and Geban, 2011) (Beentjes & VanderVoort, 1991;Schnotz, 2002;Wang & Hartley, 2003;Annetta et al, 2009), animations (Annetta et al, 2009;Papastergiou, 2009;Bourgonjon, 2010). In addition, students exposed to conceptual change based instruction had more positive attitudes than the students exposed to traditional instruction.…”

Profiling Persuasion: The Role of Beliefs, Knowledge, and Interest in the Processing of Persuasive Texts That Vary by Argument Structure

“…Regardless of whether the topic at hand addresses a scientific matter, as with the principles of projectile motion (Hynd, Alvermann, & Qian, 1997), or a controversial one, as with logging practices in the American Northwest (Garner & Alexander, 1991), text remains a primary medium for conveying the messages intended to alter knowledge or beliefs. At the heart of persuasive texts are arguments, which are causal explanations that collectively form the argument structure (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986;Toulmin, 1958).…”

Investigating the Effectiveness of Teaching Methods Based on a Four-Step Constructivist Strategy

“…Since there are no statistically significant differences between post-and delayed posttest scores, this suggests that the activities used here have been stored in the students' long-term memory rather than their short-term memory (29,30,31,32). It is interesting to consider why the students failed to understand some of the phenomena in Table 5.…”

“…In conclusion, it seems that using different teaching methods within a four step constructivist teaching strategy helps reduce students alternative conceptions to some extent, but does not fully eliminate alternative conceptions (14,30,43). ............................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................. …”