Cognitive conflict
Concept Cartoons draw on the published research into common student misconceptions (such as Driver, Squires, Rushworth and Wood-Robinson, 1994) and build examples of these common misconceptions into the statements in the Concept Cartoons. In this way the Concept Cartoon characters articulate what appear to be plausible alternative viewpoints. Learners find themselves in a position of having to give serious consideration to these plausible alternatives, many of which they may never have thought of before, and this makes them effective at generating cognitive conflict. For more confident, higher achieving learners this can be an important step in getting them to think more deeply about scientific concepts (Keogh and Naylor, 1999). Not having an obvious right answer, or not having a single right answer, makes cognitive conflict more likely