EFFECTIVENESS OF COGNITIVE CONFLICT STRATEGY FOR THE LATERAL SCIENCE THINKING ABILITY AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL

Abstract

The challenges of lateral thinking in science need to provide adequate opportunities to make observations, experiments, and investigations of the problems related to scientific reasoning. This research aimed to analyze the effectiveness of cognitive conflict strategy to assess the improvement between students exposed to cognitive conflict strategy and those exposed to traditional methods of teaching science. This experimental study has a group pretest and a post-test research design. A pretest is used to check students' prior knowledge about science, and the post-test is used to analyze the change in thinking after the intervention of the cognitive conflict strategy. A total of 94 pupils from Section A of the eighth grade were used in the study. They were split into control and experimental groups; 47 students in the control group were subjected to the traditional approach, and 47 students in the experimental group were treated to the cognitive conflict strategy. The scores of the students exposed to cognitive conflict strategies were compared to those exposed to traditional methods by comparing both groups' pre-and post-test results, experimental and control. Paired sample t-test was used to interpret the data for analysis. The results in the experimental group are more significant than the control group. The mean score of the post-test post-test (M=22.3) is significantly higher than the mean value of the pretest (M=13.73). There is an interaction between learning types and prior science knowledge of students. Thus, lateral thinking questions can minimize students' difficulties in completing the science difficulties. Cognitive conflict strategy helps the students cope with difficulties and enhance their lateral science ability.