Students' cognitive conflict and conceptual change in a physics by inquiry class

With proper context settings, instructors need to guide students to recognize explicitly cognitive conflicts among students' existing understandings and new observations. To study this issue, we have developed an easy-to-use instrument, the in-class Conflict and Anxiety Recognition Evaluation (iCARE), for monitoring the status of students' cognitive conflicts and anxiety in the context of Physics by Inquiry (PBI) classes. Using iCARE, we investigate what types of cognitive conflict is constructive or destructive in conceptual change when college students are confronted with anomalous situations in a PBI class. In this research, we will present our results about the relationship between students' prior knowledge and their conceptual change and the relationship between students' types of cognitive conflicts and their conceptual change.