Award Date

5-1-2017

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Psychology & Higher Education

First Committee Member

CarolAnne M. Kardash

Second Committee Member

Gale M. Sinatra

Third Committee Member

E. Michael Nussbaum

Fourth Committee Member

Hasan Deniz

Number of Pages

144

Abstract

The current study examines the effects of refutation text and refutation-based elaborated feedback on conceptual understanding, self-efficacy, interest, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge, within the context of learning about climate change. The study also tests whether elaborated feedback moderates the refutation text effect through an interaction. One hundred and fifty nine undergraduate students were recruited to participate in this study, which was administered via computer. They completed measures of their self-efficacy and interest in learning about climate change, as well as climate change beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge. Approximately half of the participants read a refutation text and half read a comparison expository text. Participants then completed a series of multiple choice questions either with or without elaborated refutation-based feedback, creating four mutually exclusive groups based on type of text by type of feedback design. Participants then answered five open-ended questions as a measure of deep conceptual understanding before completing the self-efficacy, interest, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge measures again. There were no significant interaction effects of text and feedback by time on the variables of interest. However, there was a significant increase in overall interest, beliefs, and knowledge from pretest to posttest. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Keywords

Conceptual change; Feedback; Learning; Motivation; Refutation Text

Disciplines

Educational Psychology

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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