Conceptual Change Theory

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Conceptual Change Theory

• Sachel Cato

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Previously

• Naïve Beliefs
• Which focused on how to prevent the formation of
  reasoning biases
• Students come to the learning situation with
  preconceived notions about the way the world
  works, through their everyday experiences, and
  this provides a platform from which learners
  interpret their world. This knowledge sometimes
  conflicts with information taught in school
  (Sinatra, 2005).

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• As an example, many young children believe that
  the earth is flat, as their experience suggests,
  and thus have considerable difficulty developing
  the conception of a spherical earth (Vosniadou
  Brewer, 1992).

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• Learning under these circumstances often involves
  not only the integration of new information into
  memory but also the restructuring of existing
  knowledge representations. This restructuring is
  known as conceptual change or conceptual change
  learning (Vosniadou, 1999).

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Three Traditional Areas of Conceptual Change
Research

• Cognitive Factors in Conceptual Change
• Cognitive psychologists have used the term
  Conceptual Change to mean both the process and
  the outcome of change
• Or, both the process by which a concept takes on
  new meaning and to the resulting change in
  meaning (Chi, 1992)
• The site of change is the mental representation
  of conceptual knowledge

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Three Traditional Areas of Conceptual Change
Research

• Cognitive Psychological Models of Change
• Early research focused on learners existing
  conceptions and described these as barriers to
  knowledge restructuring in that misconceptions
  proved to be resistant to change and had to be
  overcome.
• This notion of resistance led to researchers to
  look at motivational constructs.

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Three Traditional Areas of Conceptual Change
Research

• Developmental perspectives of knowledge
  restructuring
• Vosniadou and Brewer (1992) revisited
• Young childrens conceptions are often based on
  everyday experience and fundamentally different
  from those of adults and scientists and their
  research pointed to internal cognitive processes
  that mediate conceptual growth.
• These findings contributed to an understanding
  that change is essentially a developmental
  process.

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Three Traditional Areas of Conceptual Change
Research

• The design of instruction to foster change
• Science educators sought to understand why
  students knowledge seemed so resistant to change
  even with instruction designed to alter those
  ideas.
• Posner et al. (1982) developed the Conceptual
  Change Model (CCM) which described the nature of
  students resistance to new ideas as well as the
  conditions necessary to create knowledge change

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Three Traditional Areas of Conceptual Change
Research

• The design of instruction to foster change
• Posner et al. (1982) CCM stated that individuals
  must become dissatisfied with existing
  conceptions of scientific phenomenon. They must
  then find new conceptions to be both intelligible
  and plausible or, new ideas must be
  comprehensible and believable. Lastly, the
  students must find the new conceptions fruitful
  for explaining other conceptions or related
  phenomenon.

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• I am now going to talk about a new model.
• The Conceptual Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
• Dole and Sinatra (1998)

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• The previous areas of conceptual change
  research focused on cognitive structures alone
  and typically did not account for affective,
  motivational, or contextual factors which
  motivational scholar Paul Pintrich and colleagues
  helped bring to the foreground and inspire the
  Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
  (CRKM) by Dole and Sinatra (1998).

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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)

• The CRKM borrows views on attitude change and
  persuasion from social psychology, particularly
  the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of Petty
  and Cacioppo (1986).
• The ELM is a dual process model of attitude
  change that describes both a central and a
  peripheral route to change where the central
  route involves deep and systematic processing
  that typically leads to change. It also expresses
  the importance of affective constructs by
  describing motivational influences on attitude
  and belief change (Sinatra, 2005).

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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)

• The CRKM describes how learner and message
  characteristics interact, leading to a degree of
  engagement with the new concept. It is a depth of
  cognitive engagement that ultimately determines
  the likelihood of change (Sinatra, 2005).
• Message characteristics refer to the features of
  the instructional content and describe the extent
  to which the learner finds the message
  comprehensible, coherent, plausible, and
  rhetorically compelling.

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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)
Message Characteristics
Comprehensible (understandable)
Plausible (creditable)
Coherent (explanatory coherence)
Rhetorically Compelling
The message must provide an explanation of the
phenomenon that links ideas into a conceptual
whole.
The language usage, the sources of information
that form the argument, and the justifications
provided must be convincing and persuasive to the
individual.
The message must not be too difficult for a
particular individual to grasp. The individual
must also have sufficient knowledge to relate to
the message.
An individual must deicide that the message could
reasonably be true. They may weigh the quality of
the evidence and decide on the probability of its
truthfulness.
If any of these characteristics are missing
change is unlikely to occur.
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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)

• Learner characteristics refer to existing
  conceptions (background knowledge) and
  motivational factors.
• Background knowledge centers around three key
  aspects of a learners existing knowledge
  Strength, Coherence, and Commitment.

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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)
Learner Characteristics
Strength
Coherence
Commitment
Does the existing conception provide an
explanation of the phenomenon, idea, or event
that fits together all the evidence? When
existing ideas lack conceptual coherence they are
more susceptible to change.
Commitment to an idea may be strong or weak and
ideas to which an individual is strongly
committed are less likely to change.
Refers to conceptual development of the learners
existing idea. Strong ideas are richly
represented and well connected to other ideas and
are therefore less likely to change.
All three facets of existing knowledge have some
motivational characteristics but there are four
specific motivational factors that are identified
by the CKRM.
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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)
Motivational Characteristics
Dissatisfaction
Personal Relevance
Social Context
Need for Cognition
A message contains a variety of social context
variables. Interactions with members of the
community, school, or peer group may motivate
individuals to process information they would not
otherwise consider.
A personal characteristic of a learner.
Like Posners model, individuals must experience
something like cognitive conflict or dissonance
to consider change.
Used to capture motivation stemming from
interest, emotional involvement, self-efficacy,
and having a stake in the outcome.
Motivation interacts with message characteristics
in dynamic ways in that, if a message lacks any
of the characteristics stated, the learner will
lack the motivation to process the message.
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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)

• Based on the outcome of the interaction between
  the learner and message characteristics, an
  individual will engage with information to some
  extent as shown by the Engagement continuum,
  which ranges from low cognitive engagement to
  high metacognitive engagement.
• Low engagement superficial, surface-level
  processing with little reflection
• High engagement deep processing, elaborative
  strategy use and significant metacognitive
  reflection.
• Significant and long-lasting conceptual change is
  likely if individuals engage in high
  metacognitive processing.

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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)

• The CRKM is not a linear model describing a
  specific sequence of conditions for change.
  Rather, is describes change as an iterative
  process, whereby the learner and message
  characteristics interact producing a degree of
  engagement (Sinatra, 2005).

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Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model
(CRKM), Dole and Sinatra (1998)
Learner Existing Conception
Message
strength
coherence
commitment
Comprehensible?
Motivation
Coherent?
Dissatisfaction?
Personal Relevance?
Plausible?
Social Context?
Need for Cognition?
Rhetorically Compelling?
If No
If Yes
Peripheral Cue Present?
Engagement Continuum
If Yes
If No
High
Low
If High
If Low
Strong Conceptual Change
or
or
Weak Conceptual Change
No Conceptual Change
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Summary

• The model begins with the interaction of learner
  and message characteristics and considers the
  learners existing conceptions and motivation to
  process.
• Motivation stems from four sources
  dissatisfaction with existing ideas, personal
  relevance of the information, individuals need
  for cognition, and social influences.
• Features of the message (comprehensibility and
  plausibility) interact with the individuals
  perception of the information.
• If the message makes sense to the individual and
  if motivated to do so, the individual will
  proceed to engage with the information.
• Processing with high metacognitive engagement can
  result in strong and long-lasting conceptual
  change. If engagement is not high, change may be
  weak or unlikely.