Teaching for hot conceptual change: towards a new model, beyond the cold and warm ones

Abstract

At the beginning of the 1980’s, one of the most striking explanations of conceptual change was made by Posner, Strike, Hewson & Gertzog (1982) with a Conceptual Change Theory based on a Scientific Revolution Theory of Kuhn (1970). In Conceptual Change Theory, learning was explained with the Piaget (1970)’s concepts such as assimilation and accommodation. Especially at the beginning of 1990, the Conceptual Change Theory was called as a cold conceptual change, for solely taking the cognitive factors of individuals, and for not taking the affective factors like motivation into consideration (Pintrich, Max & Boyle, 1993). In their studies Tyson, Venville, Harrison & Treagust (1997) (1997) and Alsop & Watts suggested a multidimensional structure of conceptual change including affective characteristics. Dole & Sinatra (1998) have emphasized information processing in conceptual change and have also described the impact of motivation on conceptual change in their Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model. The Authors explain how the affective and cognitive characteristics interact with each other, and they come up with the warming trend in the conceptual change. Gregoire (2003) has emphasized the automatic evaluation of message and emotions such as fear and anxiety. In order to show how these constructs effect conceptual change, the author has proposed Cognitive Affective Model of Conceptual Change called Hot Conceptual Change. According to the Zhou (2010), although hot factors, such as motivation, are added up to the conceptual change models cumulatively in time, they have little evidence at the point of science teaching. Author proposed a model called “Argumentation Approach in Teaching Science” in order to raise temperature in science teaching by using argumentation approach. In this study, we tried to raise temperature more than Zhou (2010) did and started hot trend in science teaching. In this paper, conceptual change literature has been summarized and our teaching model based on a hot conceptual change and supported by motivational and metacognitive strategies has been introduced. Furthermore, application of our hot model to the Photoelectric Effect Teaching was presented.