Preservice elementary school teachers' conceptual change about projectile motion: Refutation text, demonstration, affective factors, and relevance
✍ Scribed by Cynthia Hynd; Donna Alvermann; Gaoyin Qian
- Book ID
- 101269100
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 157 KB
- Volume
- 81
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0097-0352
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
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.