Effectiveness of conceptual change texts: a Meta analysis

The purpose of this study was to determine the overall effectiveness of conceptual change texts on academic achievement and to find out if effectiveness was related to some characteristics of the study. This study followed up a Meta analysis research approach. 42 published and unpublished studies and 42 experiment groups' effect sizes were tested in this study. The overall effect size for conceptual change texts was calculated as 1.16. This is a large effect size according to Cohen's criteria. To summarize the results of this research, it was found that conceptual change texts have been quite successful in promoting the students' academic success. These findings represented that there was no publication bias in respect to publication status. Considerably strong effects were found for chemistry subject and also university level. Also it was found that instructor effect was the single factor that affecting students' academic success. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.