Yeounsoo Kim

Students’ Cognitive Conflict and Conceptual Change in a Physics by Inquiry Class

With proper context settings, instructors need to guide students to recognize explicitly cognitive conflicts among students’ existing understandings and new observations. To study this issue, we have developed an easy‐to‐use instrument, the in‐class Conflict and Anxiety Recognition Evaluation (iCARE), for monitoring the status of students’ cognitive conflicts and anxiety in the context of Physics by Inquiry (PBI) classes. Using iCARE, we investigate what types of cognitive conflict is constructive or destructive in conceptual change when college students are confronted with anomalous situations in a PBI class. In this research, we will present our results about the relationship between students’ prior knowledge and their conceptual change and the relationship between students’ types of cognitive conflicts and their conceptual change.

Alternative conceptions, memory, & mental models in physics education

There are two somewhat independent research traditions, which converge to suggest a form of students’ knowledge: alternative conceptions and mental models. However we have little literature that explains what they are different from each other and from memory. This study tried to describe these issues with some thoughts about how cognitive psychology and science education approaches can be best synthesized in order to approach these questions.

Development of an Instrument for Evaluating Anxiety Caused by Cognitive Conflict

Physics learning situations often involve many cognitive conflicts between a student’s present understandings and new information being learned. Cognitive conflict is known as an important factor in conceptual change. Therefore, it is important to help physics teachers and students develop skills and knowledge for more effective conflict management. However there is no readily available method to monitor the existence and features of cognitive conflicts that students may encounter during their learning. We focus the study on student anxiety caused by cognitive conflict so that we can improve student motivation. This study is targeted to develop an easy‐to‐use instrument that can be implemented in the classrooms to monitor student anxiety in cognitive conflict situations and the effects on student motivation. In this paper, we will discuss the structure of this instrument and show results from using this tool in our Physics by Inquiry class.