Chinese Journal of Science Education


Vol. 11 No. 3 , Pages 277 - 296 , 2003

A Study of Elementary and Secondary School Students’ Misconceptions of the Classification of Metals (Article written in chinese)

Liung-Rong HSU

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and apply a two-tier diagnostic instrument to explore students’ misconceptions of the classification of metals. In the present study, we modified the procedure of Treagust (1988, 1995) to develop the instrument. The pilot study involves a survey with an open-end questionnaire, the results of which serve as the major source for determining the instances and questions for interviews. The interviews explore students’ misconceptions which provides the basis for the design of the two-tier diagnostic instrument. The developed instrument was then administered to 246 fourth graders, 275 sixth graders, 207 eighth graders and 251 eleventh graders (total N = 879), selected from the schools in the middle geographic area of Taiwan. The reliability of the instrument was established by the test-retest method. The results indicate the students have some misconceptions about metals, including all metals are attracted to a magnet, and mineral products are metals. Language is a potential source of the students’ misconceptions. For example, they tend to think that the matter’s name (in Chinese) denotes the component of a metal, and that ’water-silver’ (the Chinese name of mercury) has a silver component. On the other hand, the students lack consistent criteria for classifying metals. Further studies are needed in this respect.

Keywords: classification; metal; misconception; two-tier instrument

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