Effects of augmented activation, refutational text, efficacy beliefs, epistemological beliefs, and systematic processing on conceptual change

Previous research has documented that preservice teachers' naive subject matter beliefs are resistant to change. Interventions specified by conceptual change theory---augmented activation, or making tacit beliefs accessible to conscious reflection, and refuting misconceptions through refutational text---were investigated as a means of changing preservice teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning. Weaknesses of previous research on conceptual change, such as the lack of experimental research and failure to attend to affective and motivational factors in conceptual change, were addressed by investigating individual differences specified by social psychological research on attitude change. Pretreatment questionnaires assessing students' implicit and explicit mathematics beliefs, epistemological beliefs, mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs, and ability were administered to 181 elementary education majors. Then students were randomly assigned to a group receiving augmented activation and refutational text or to a control group. Analysis of covariance was used to test for treatment effects on conceptual change in prospective teachers' mathematics beliefs. Hypotheses related to individual differences in belief change and processing were investigated using multiple regression techniques.;Analysis of covariance indicated that students in the treatment group demonstrated greater conceptual change toward adopting constructivist mathematics beliefs compared to those in the control group. Multiple regression analyses revealed individual differences in conceptual change and systematic processing. Epistemological beliefs in knowledge as simple and certain were related to belief change, systematic processing, and constructivist mathematics beliefs. Refutational text promoted greater cognitive processing of text only for those with sufficiently high mathematics ability. Students in the treatment group had more negative affective responses to the text. Greater systematic processing predicted a greater amount of belief change, in the direction of favoring the belief.;This study provides support for two mechanisms for promoting conceptual change in prospective teachers' beliefs about mathematics: (a) making implicit beliefs explicit and refuting them through sound, logical argument and (b) getting students engaged in greater systematic than heuristic processing of the text. This study also sheds light on the important role that epistemological beliefs play in conceptual change and systematic processing, and it demonstrates that cognitive disequilibrium is a negative affective state.