Another means to foster group cohesion would be to specifically teach creative
controversy skills. Providing this instruction should lead to more cohesion and hence more
Alternate Claims. A means to test this would be to give a group problem, teach controversy
skills, an then give another problem. More Alternate Claims should appear. One could even run
this as a controlled, quantitative experiment where a control group did not receive instruction in
creative controversy.
Third, I did not address the issue of conceptual change. Looking for misconceptions was
not the purpose of this research. There are examples of incorrect usage of physics terminology
by these groups. The comment of Brown and Palincsar (1989) about the necessity in the group
to “explain, elaborate or defend” an idea is actually made in the context of their theorizing about
what promotes conceptual change. If I wanted to look for evidence of conceptual change, I
would select groups from early in an academic term when concepts like Newton’s Laws of
Motion are still a bit unclear and confusing to students. I’d probably give an inclined plane
problem and see if that old common misconception of “the force making it go up the plane”
surfaces and is corrected by the group process. Based on my experience as a teacher, out of ten
groups, some are sure to get it right and some are sure to persist in the misconception.
CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION CONCERNS
Although this research had a specific research goal, and very definite research questions,
the ultimate goal of research in science education is to improve teaching and learning. I have
several suggestions to make concerning the use of cooperative groups in physics problem
solving. Some of these suggestions are based on results that support previous research and some
are based on this contribution to science education.