KNOWLEDGE IN TRANSITION - ADULTS DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING OF A PRINCIPLE OF PHYSICAL CAUSALITY

What are the conditions that make it likely that cognitive change will occur? We investigate this issue with respect to 25 college students' developing understanding of gear movement (a particular problem in th e domain of physical causation). The participants solved problems, the n received minimal instruction, and solved additional problems. Signif icantly, only some of the participants changed their approach to solvi ng the problems after receiving instruction; the remainder of the part icipants were stable in their understanding and either continued to so lve all problems correctly or continued to solve key problems incorrec tly. Most analyses focused on the participants who began by solving pr oblems incorrectly. In particular, we attempted to differentiate those participants who exhibited cognitive change from those who did not. T o do this, we examined precursors of knowledge change that were motiva ted by different theoretical positions on mechanisms of cognitive chan ge and development (i.e., consideration of multiple approaches, cognit ive conflict, and instruction as an example of a sociocultural process ). Results suggest that having multiple approaches available and using instructional information to build on not-well-developed conceptions are likely candidates for understanding knowledge change for adult par ticipants with respect to their developing understanding of physical c ausality.