Beyond uniformity: variations in the implementation of cognitive conflict strategies in physics education

Date

2026-08-01

Author

Kera, Beliz
Özdemir, Ömer Faruk

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Instructional strategies are central to science education research, yet they are often evaluated as if they were uniform treatments, whether in classroom experiments or meta-analyses. This assumption masks the internal variation that shapes how strategies function in practice, limiting both theoretical development and instructional improvement. This article introduces a framework for studying instructional strategies beyond uniformity, using cognitive conflict—a central strategy in conceptual change research—as a case. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of 229 reported implementations in physics education, identifying variation across four dimensions: the misconceptions targeted, the methods used to generate dissatisfaction, the instructional tools employed, and the content areas addressed. These dimensions not only varied internally but also interacted systematically, revealing patterns such as empirical falsification paired with conceptual relations and implemented through student experimentation. By mapping these dynamics, we move beyond treating cognitive conflict as a monolithic strategy and instead highlight how it operates as a dynamic configuration of interacting components in science classrooms. This methodological shift offers a new lens for understanding instructional strategies in science education, demonstrating why studying their variation is essential for advancing theory, guiding instructional design, and strengthening future research.

Subject Keywords

cognitive conflict, conceptual change, discrepant events, refutational texts

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/120610

Collections

Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Article