The Argument Underlying a Macroscopic Model for The Analysis of Protocols of Students' Thoughts

Christened "the argument", this work is concerned with whether, in what ways, and to what end the content of students' idiosyncratic thoughts should be elicited and described. During the data analysis phase of the research study sitting at the focal point of "the argument" two main ideas emerge. The first idea is that of focal dissonance. Focal dissonance obtains when, owing to paradigmatic differences, two individuals manage to focus their thinking on different sorts of problems which they see as relevant to a given event. The second idea is that an individual might have to be supplied with an appropriate motive in order to proceed in one particular way rather than any other possible way in seeking a solution to a task, in the same way that a witness at a murder trial requires a motive so as to initiate his testimony by proving that he was himself alive at the time the crime was committed. It is argued that students have their own natural paradigms, knowledge of which is an essential pre-requisite for planning instruction. The notion of attributive conceptual element, deriving from interacting physical objects, is introduced and elaborated as one of the key notions which must feature in any language designed for use in discourse on cognitive phenomena, especially in the quest for understanding students' natural paradigms or frames of reference. This notion is best suited for the purpose since it entails interacting physical objects in the same way that such objects, existing in the physical world, have provided sensory data as raw material for the construction of students' natural paradigms. Since interaction implies interrelations among the participant entities, "the argument" spares no effort to identify certain sorts of relations which can subsist among attributive conceptual elements, namely, logical, causal, and "triple-C" relations. These sorts of relations are the distinguishing characteristics of three sorts of macroscopic cognitive framework into which attributive conceptual elements are integrated by the human mind.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Tsuma, Orren Gershom Khayo

• Education, Educational Psychology

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8203621

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/68763