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Promoting Science Teacher Education Through Dissonance And Discrepancy, Nelofer Halai, Alan E. Wheeler

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

While inquiry in science teaching has found a great deal of acceptance (Colletet and Chiapetta, 1989), there is a growing recognition that educators need a wider repertoire of inquiry strategies applicable to various situations. One promising approach is through the use of so-called ‘dissonant’ or ‘discrepant events’. This concept of discrepancy can be traced to the early work of Festinger (1975) and his Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in which he stated that the creation of dissonance is psychologically very uncomfortable and motivates individuals to actively reduce the level of dissonance and thereby return to a state of greater equilibrium or …