Abstract
The purposes of the present study were to develop a reciprocal teaching strategy to induce conceptual change, and to examine the effectiveness of the teaching strategy in elementary school science lessons on electric circuits. Participants in the study were the 30 students in a fourth grade class. Coding analysis and interpretive analysis of transactive discussions were used to evaluate conceptual change occurring during cooperative discussion during the lessons and to analyze variables that might be affecting change. The results were as follows: (1) In the initial phase of cooperative discussions, a teaching strategy of predicting and theorizing induced the students' activities of analyzing the task and the situation by themselves and with others,(2) in the development phase, a teaching strategy of summarizing results allowed the students to specify explicitly differences between their own ideas and those of others, which resulted in conceptual conflict, and (3) in the final phase, a teaching strategy of coordinating the predictions and theories to the results integrated the students' ideas so that conceptual conflicts were resolved. These results suggest that, in the course of reciprocal teaching, when maximum conceptual conflict was induced and discussions reached deadlock, a strategy incorporating thinking guidance for coordinating the predictions and theories to the results properly facilitated conceptual change.
