The Types of Secondary School Students' Preconceptions on the Motion of the Earth and the Moon

계통도를 이용한 중.고등학생의 지구와 달의 운동에 관한 개념 유형 연구

In spite of school science learning, the students' conceptions have not been changed easily. Therefore, to make students overcome their non scientific conceptions has been an important issue in science education. The purpose of this study was to identify the conceptions of students and teachers on the motion of the earth and the moon. The instrument was developed for estimating students' understandings of the concepts related to the motion of the earth and the moon. The validity of the instrument was examined by the specialists in Science Educator and Astronomer. At the same time, the two field trials had been executed, and the items were modified. Also, it consists of 12 items including 9 two-tier multiple choice items and 3 multiple choice items. The population of this study consists of 250 eighth-, 299 tenth-, 292 eleventh-grade students, 134 science teachers in secondary school. SPSS/PC+ was adopted for the statistical analysis. The type of misconceptions possessed students were as follows: 1) At 12:00 noon, the sun is directly overhead. 2) First quarter moon is a half of overall surface of the moon. 3) Air don't rotate with the earth surface because it keeps apart from the earth surface. 4) Summer is warmer than winter, because the earth is nearer from the sun in summer. 5) Whenever season is changed, the direction of rotation axis of the earth is changed. 6) The moon is the brightest at the position of new moon, because the distance between the moon and the sun is the shortest and the moon is received strongest sunlight. 7) The moon is not seen at the position of real full moon, because it is covered with shadow of the earth. 8) When the moon is not seen in the earth, sunlight is not reached at the moon. The major findings were as follows : 1) The middle school students had more misconceptions than those of high school students. And female students had more misconceptions than those of male ones. 2) The rate of correct answer and the type of conception in the tenth grade students were very similar with eleventh grade students. 3) The higher cognitive level, the better development of scientific conception and the less misconception. Also, the correlation coefficient between scientific conception score and GALT score was 0.57. 4) The students in scientific part had higher the rate of correct answer than those of students in human part and the former had less misconception than the latter. 5) The rate of correct answer about model and figure items was lower than descriptive ones, because they did not understand about figures itselves. These types of misconceptions will be used for science instruction and studies of other conceptions need.