Effects of Cognitive Conflict Instructional Strategy on Students’ Conceptual Change in Temperature and Heat

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of cognitive-conflict-based physics instruction over the traditionally designed physics instruction on students’ conceptual change in heat and temperature. The subjects were 249 senior secondary II students from 2 schools purposively sampled from 12 secondary schools. The 2 schools sampled had well-equipped laboratory, experienced physics teachers, and two intact classes. One of the intact classes in each school was assigned to control group. In one school, there were 70 subjects for experimental group and 60 for control group, while in the other school, there were 60 for experimental group and 59 for control group. Both groups were taught by the same teacher, and this lasted for 6 weeks of intensive treatment. The experimental group received cognitive-conflict-based instruction, while the control group received traditionally designed physics instruction. The instrument for obtaining the data was thermal concept evaluation (TCE). Students in both groups were pretested using TCE to establish their level of initial understanding of heat and temperature. At the end of the treatment, the same test was administered as posttest. The data generated from the TCE were analyzed using frequency and chi-square statistics, indicating that the level of understanding of heat and temperature was significantly dependent on the treatment. Based on the findings, some recommendations were made.