• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.352-362
• /
• 2006

Many misconceptions regarding biology and evolution have been reported by students prior to being exposed to a formal education program of evolution which challenged them. This study sought to investigate and to analyze the misconception formation process of evolution originating from TV animation and science books for children. Firstly, to identify TV animation's influence on students' misconceptions of evolution, a questionnaire including TV animation characters was constructed and administered to 146 elementary school students, 161 middle school students, and 156 high school students. The data collected was analyzed. Secondly, 17 science books for children were sampled and the contents related to evolution were selected and analyzed in terms of five evolutionary explanations: creationism internal will explanation, teleological explanations, explanations of use and disuse, mutation and finally, natural selection. Children have understood 'growth' and 'metamorphosis' on TV animation as 'evolution'. The processes by which characters on TV animation undergo some forms of change, which are in fact a kind of metamorphosis has often been understood as 'evolution'. Many respondents have defined evolution incorrectly as the process of growing and changing shape. On the other hand, some science books fur children contained descriptions of evolution including' mutation and finally natural selection explanation'; however, most of the science books fur children sampled in this study were written through the perspectives of alternative evolutionary views such as 'teleology view', 'internal will view', and 'use and disuse view'. It is apparent that TV animation and science books fur children influence the formation of various misconceptions regarding evolution by children.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.379-393
• /
• 1995

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.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.185-193
• /
• 1995

The purpose of this article is to find out psychological mechanism on the core of misconceptions. Theoretical frame to search for the core of misconceptions is based on the Pascual-Leone's neo Piagetian theory. Although Pascual-Leone's theory is a cognitive developmental theory, its psychological mechanism gives us new insights on misconception. According to the comparison between Pascual-Leone's psychological mechanism and the common specifics of misconceptions and their items, conclusions could be summarized as follows: 1) Children's misconceptions and LC learning structures have the same nature. 2) Structures in items of misconceptions and misleading factor structures in cognitive tasks affect mental process with the same mechanism. 3) LC learning structures was activated preferentially in knowledge structures by F operator, with the same activation mechanism, the process children's misconceptions was activated firstly among other conceptions could be explained.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.81-100
• /
• 2002

This study identified concepts of heat and temperature. The study was conducted by 200 pre-service elementary school teachers at J-university. The questionnaire consisted of 11 multiple choice questions regarding equilibrium of heat, amount of heat, conduction, and radiation. The questions were designed to provide reasons based on answers. The results showed a misconception about the direction of heat transfer. A large percentage of individuals surveyed believed temperature was a measure of heat and also thought heat to be an element. They were not able to distinguish between conceptions of heat and conceptions of temperature.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.25-36
• /
• 1991

For the purpose of extending the fields of biological preconceptual studies, the conceptions of plant classification, which have not been researched on them in korea, were selected and a questionnaire were administered to a sample of a total of 965 students at elementary and secondary school levels of korea. Many elementary school students have the alternative conceptions that plants are not alive. The misconceptions in plant classification are partly caused by the uncertainty of biological terms. To serve the teachers, who have difficulty in teaching them, the preceeding results are summarised with Composition the misconception maps.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.15-27
• /
• 2000

The purpose of this study was to survey the thinking of children, preliminary elementary teachers and elementary teachers in relation to the experiment of candle's combustion in a bottle on the water, to develop some supplementary experiments for the correction of the misconception on this experiment and to propose a new teaching method for this subject-matter The results of this study can be summarized as follows. 1. Most of the answers are related to the simple observation as the extinguishing of candlelight and the water rising in the bottle after a candle's combustion. And it is appeared that all the groups are similarly short of the ability of experimental design to verify the cause and effect. 2. from the results of the developed supplementary experiments, it is concluded that the main cause of the water rising is not the combustion of oxygen, but the expansion of volume and the releasing of air in the bottle in the bottle by heat of candle's combustion. 3. Based on the above results, a new direction for the teaching method of this subject is proposed.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.1392-1401
• /
• 2014

This study was conducted to understand elementary school from third to sixth grade students' conceptions of evaporation and condensation to classified by grade and examples of questionnaires. For this purpose, 1606 students from 3rd grade to 6th grade were involved. They had conceptions of evaporation and condensation questionnaire. The results of this study were as the following: Firstly, students have to know about the basic conceptions to understand conceptions of evaporation and condensation. Secondly, it would appear that these ideas can sometimes be influenced in unintended ways and be not easily changed by science teaching. Thirdly, it would appear that they understood conceptions of evaporation better than that of condensation.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.28 no.7
• /
• pp.730-748
• /
• 2008

Students often have tenacious physics misconceptions and many studies were conducted on engendering conceptual change. Correspondingly, there is much literature on alternative assessment and its role in student learning. This is a comparison study on using alternative assessments to improve common students' misconceptions in GCE Advanced Level Physics. This research also aims to affirm alternative assessment as a valid tool for learning and promote its use. This study involved two classes with 24 students each. For four weeks, electromagnetism was taught to students using the same classroom pedagogies but with different assignments. The control group completeda standard drill-and-practice assignment while the experimental group finished an alternative assessment. From the preliminary results, students who undertook the alternative assessment and the traditional assessment both improved, however, the treatment group did not perform statistically significantly better than the control group. The reasons will be discussed and commented and it is expected to have significant improvement on rectifying misconceptionsupon next batch of experimentation groups.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.208-218
• /
• 2004

Many elementary school students have misconception related to dissolution and solution. Moreover, they usually fail to apply the results of the experiments in their science classes to their everyday life, and also have low science achievement. Therefore, they are not interested in science, and sometimes some of them are even afraid of it. The purposes of this study is to investigate the effects of concept mapping activity on science achievement and attitude. In addition, this study also aims at presenting the teaching and learning method of utilizing concept maps in order to have the students form correct concepts. The subjects were classified into two groups one group is composed of thirty-seven students (experimental group) who were participated in concept mapping activity, and the other is composed of thirty-eight students (comparison group) who were participated in the traditional teaching method. The major findings of this study are as follows: First, the concept mapping activity has a positive effect on improving students＇ science achievement. Second, the classes using concept maps have a good influence on forming students＇ science attitude. Third, the concept mapping activity is more effective in improving science achievement of mid and low level students. In conclusion, the loaming by concept mapping activity positively influence students＇ science achievement and attitude. Particularly for the students in mid and high levels, the effect is more remarkable.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.611-619
• /
• 2006

The aims of this study are to investigate science high school students' understanding of velocity and acceleration of a simple pendulum bob, and to investigate their understanding of inertia and gravitational force in the motion of a pendulum bob when the tension is removed. For the study, 46 students that had already studied the physical, concepts in simple pendulum were sampled from a science high school in a large city in Korea. For a comparison with general high school students' conceptions, 49 students were sampled from a general high school in the same city. The test tool for the investigation consisted of four drawing and simple-answering type questions developed by the authors. The outcomes of the study revealed that a substantial number of science high school students have misconceptions concerning acceleration in pendulum motion, and that many of them do not understand the relationship between force and acceleration. In addition, the results of the study showed that more than 30% of the students drew the path of a bob going along the tangential direction at the highest point of the motion, and approximately 20% of them drew the path of a bob falling straight down at the lowest point of the motion.