Cognitive dissonance or p-prims? Towards identifying the best way to overcome misconceptions in physics

Abstract

In this classroom-based action-research project, I compared the following two approaches to check their effectiveness in helping students overcome physics misconceptions: Inducing cognitive dissonance or gradually building on students' previous knowledge activating the relevant phenomenological primitives (p-prims). This took place over a two-lesson sequence (each an hour long) using year 8 (12 years old) and year 9 (13 years old) top set students (N=87 in total), in the context of Newton's first law. Results were better for both year groups when inducing cognitive dissonance, which seems to be more effective not only with surface-level learning, but deep-learning as well.