Importance Of Cognitive Dissonance In Mathematics

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The national curriculum (2013) highlights the importance of conceptual understanding in mathematics which will be explored though this essay. Ofsted (2012:6) support this by stating that ‘the responsibility of mathematics educations is to enable all pupils to develop conceptual understanding of the mathematics they learn. This will be explored by considering the use of cognitive dissonance in mathematics and promoting relationships between schemas. This will be further developed by analysing a mathematics lesson on fractions where cognitive dissonance was caused to promote conceptual understanding. It will begin by defining conceptual understanding using the work of different theorists.
At a basic level, Hiebert and Lefevre (1986) describe …show more content…

Defining cognitive dissonance can be considered challenging because authors assign it different terminology. Cognitive dissonance is describe by Haylock and Thangata (2007:23) as a form of cognitive conflict whereby children are presented with ‘conflicting ideas, or a result that differs from their prediction or conflicts with existing understanding.’ This implies that there are different types of cognitive dissonance that can be used to promote better understanding once the conflict has been resolved. In support of this, Festinger (1957) used the term cognitive dissonance to refer to the …show more content…

For this reason, dissonance can be considered subjective as it is dependent on the individual and their pre-existing knowledge. Dissonance that involves competing claims can be caused by contradicting statements or outcomes that conflict with prior knowledge (Zaslavsky, 2005). For example, if a child is presented with the question in figure 2, their initial prediction may be to choose the larger percentage because they have been taught that is you have a larger percentage you will have more. However, when they work through the question they may realise that both options result in the same amount and dissonance may occur as the outcome is different from their initial

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