SOCIOCOGNITIVE CONFLICT PROCESSES IN SCIENCE LEARNING: BENEFITS AND LIMITS

The present paper focuses on instructional treatment of students' conceptions about floating and sinking through sociocognitive conflict processes. In this direction a study was prepared including the detection of students' conceptions of floating and sinking as well as the design, implementation and evaluation of teaching sequences implemented in 14 year-old students in Greece. Data collection was carried out through interviews and qualitative analysis of the students' writings and talk during the teaching sequences. The analysis of the students' writings and talk brought out their different reactions to sociocognitive conflict processes as well as the different learning outcomes of those processes as regards the change and construction of new conceptions.