A note on a statistical paradigm for the evaluation of cognitive structure in physics instruction

Abstract

Data from Shavelson’s (1972) study investigating the change in cognitive structure due to instruction in Newtonian mechanics were reanalyzed using the quadratic assignment (QA) approach. This application of the QA technique involves a nonparametric confirmatory procedure to evaluate whether a hypothesized structure is present in a proximity matrix representing cognitive structure. The proximity matrices in Shavelson’s study were obtained from multiple-response word association tests at a pretest and at the end of each day of a 5-day instructional sequence. The Euclidean distance measure Shavelson used to evaluate change toward a representation of the instructional content, however, did not measure structural change in the proximity matrices for cognitive structure. The present reanalysis using the QA paradigm showed that cognitive structure after instruction was similar to content structure before instruction, and word association tests did not measure any subtle changes toward greater similarity to content structure. However, the QA results provided some evidence for Shavelson’s contention that the experimental group’s cognitive structure changed toward greater homogeneity later in instruction.