Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: 'Holistic confrontation' Gadgil et al. - a useful construct for h2cm?

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Monday, January 14, 2013

'Holistic confrontation' Gadgil et al. - a useful construct for h2cm?

The possible explanatory utility of what I've termed holistic bandwidth is an ongoing prompt for me to study Hodges' model as a conceptual space, or series of spaces. In the literature recently I discovered Gadgil et al. who explain what they term holistic confrontation in their paper:

Chi (2008) has characterized three kinds of student misconceptions that increase in their representational complexity from false beliefs to flawed mental models to incorrect ontological categories. This framework suggests that different kinds of cognitive processes and instruction may be differentially effective in facilitating conceptual change for a given level of representational complexity. We hypothesize that as the representational complexity of the misconception increases, so does the amount of transformation needed to rectify it. Specifically, we hypothesize that conceptual change at the mental model level requires knowledge revision to the interrelations between the features of the prior knowledge, which is different from revising individual false beliefs or reassignment of a concept to an ontological category. Furthermore, we propose that instruction that focuses the learner on revising systems of relations of the misconception, what we call “holistic confrontation”, should be more effective in facilitating change of a flawed mental model than instruction that focuses on revising false beliefs or the type of ontological category. p.47.
One of the more specific applications for Hodges' model I see and in need of demonstration is case formulation, or case conceptualization. This could extend from a general counselling, long-term medical condition self-care management level through to collaborative case formulation in formal psychological therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy and cognitive analytic therapy.

Gadgil et al. use a diagram test of the circulatory system with two instructional conditions for subjects: compare or explain-diagram. The introduction, method, design and six hypotheses in this paper comprise an interesting approach for due consideration here.

Gadgil, S., Nokes-Malach, T. J., & Chi, M. T. H. (2011). Effectiveness of holistic mental model confrontation in driving conceptual change. Learning and Instruction: 22, 1, 47–61.