Abstract

The overall purpose of this study was to investigate the role of personal relevance in conceptual change. First, we used an experimental design to investigate the role of augmented activation—which directly implicated teachers’ personal prior beliefs about mathematics learning and instruction—and refutational text manipulations on short and long-term conceptual change in preservice and inservice teachers’ constructivist beliefs about mathematics to test for a mechanism of change. Second, we examined the relationships among affect, cognitive processing, and conceptual change to clarify our understanding of the mechanisms of the conceptual change process and to empirically test key hypotheses in the Cognitive-Affective Model of Conceptual Change (CAMCC). Our results indicated that messages that heighten the personal relevance and challenge to prior beliefs with contrary evidence (i.e., augmented activation) produced conceptual change in preservice and inservice teachers’ mathematics beliefs, whereas there was no consistent effect of refutational text. We also found support for several key pathways in the CAMCC, with implications for conceptual change theory and teacher education.

摘要

本研究的总体目的是调查个人相关性在概念变化中的作用。首先，我们使用实验设计来研究增强激活的作用——它直接涉及教师对数学学习和教学的个人先验信念——以及反驳文本操作对职前和在职教师的建构主义信念的短期和长期概念变化的作用。数学来测试变化的机制。其次，我们检查了情感、认知加工和概念变化之间的关系，以阐明我们对概念变化过程机制的理解，并在概念变化的认知-情感模型 (CAMCC) 中实证检验关键假设。我们的研究结果表明，通过相反的证据（即增强激活）提高个人相关性和对先前信念的挑战的信息会在职前和在职教师的数学信念产生概念上的变化，而反驳文本没有一致的影响。我们还发现了对 CAMCC 中几个关键途径的支持，这些途径对概念变革理论和教师教育有影响。