Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the misconceptions about combustion held by junior high school students. There were fifteen combustion-related concepts in this study. To understand their ideas about combustion, this study collected the descriptive data from interviews of 12 junior high school students, six in the 7th grade and six in the 9th grade. After systematically analyzing the above data, this study developed a paper-and-pencil type two-tier diagnosis instrument for junior high school students. The data of interviews from eleven students and of paper-and-pencil test from 206 students were used to revise the two-tier diagnosis instrument. The instrument was then employed to 1210 junior high school students. The results indicated that students in the 8th and 9th grades had the same misconceptions as those in the 7th grade, and the 7th- and 8th-grade students scored in misconceptions and the population percentage almost identically on the test. However, the 9th-grade students did not score high on the test, which indicated that 9th-grade students still had many different kinds misconceptions. For conceptions about combustible, the population percentage in these three grades had the same distributions. While it seems clear that the junior high school students showed no significant growth on their conceptual learning about combustion, the results of this study should assist science teachers to understand what students have learned and how much their knowledge of combustion has grown.
| Keywords: | misconceptions; diagnostic instrument; combustion |
|---|
[Chinese Version | Index | Chinese Journal of Science Education | Other Journals | Subscription form | Enquiry ]
Mail any comments and suggestions to
hkier-journal@cuhk.edu.hk .