• Journal of Science Education
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.121-145
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to identify the misconceptions that students have on the magma and plate tectonics and to present the implications in developing textbooks as well as related curriculum of high school textbooks. Data were collected through questionnaire, consisting of some questions, short essays, and descriptive drawings, developed by the research team. A total of 140 high school students(9th graders) responded to those questionnaires and were interviewed for further information. It was reported that participants displayed various misconceptions related to magma and plate tectonics. The identified misconceptions are as follows: For the definition of magma, the 31% of participants misunderstood magma as lava. In respect to the generative mechanism of magma at subduction zone, over 90% of students responded that it is generated by frictional heat. The source of misconceptions were identified as a result from textbooks and related reference-books. For the concept of plates, 87% of students conceived 'crust or a lower part of the plates' as 'plates'. Most participants hold the right concept of oceanic ridge, whereas, 66% of them considered 'rift valley' as either 'divergence of continental plates' or 'converging boundary'. 63% of them defined 'collision boundary of continental plate' as either 'subduction zone' or 'diverging boundary'. For the definitions of the trench and Benioff zone, 86% of students responded them as the place of subduction or differing density between two converging plates. The students' misconceptions were resulted from the errors and insufficient explanation, inappropriate figures, and data presented in textbooks, reference-books, lecture, and web sites. The results of this study are implied to contribute the improvement of students' misconceptions.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.687-703
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• 2011

The declination is an important concept because it is the underlying concept to understand the plate tectonics and also is used to decide one's location by using the compass and the map in real life. So this study surveys the description of declination being used in six of the seventh curriculum earth science II textbooks followed by the investigation of the possible of misconceptions that the highschool students might have. Utilizing an inventory of key concept, this study examines the actual misconceptions of highschool students, and investigates the relationship between misconceptions and textbooks. As a result, highschool students possess some misconceptions particularly with respect to the magnetic north pole which is caused by a lack of explanation about declination and by a wrong illustration. Therefore we suggest that detailed explanations of declination with non-dipole effect and precise illustrations be provided in the textbook for students th have a better understanding about declination.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.289-299
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• 2020

In this study, the definition, the level of difficulty, and the certainty of the understanding of 113 astronomy terminologies from 2009 revised middle school geoscience textbooks were examined. And through further interviews, the types of students' misconceptions about astronomy terminologies and their representative terms - examples of misconceptions were analyzed. The definitions of the terms presented by the students were largely classified as correct, low-level, and incorrect understanding. And low-level understanding was subdivided into high-level definition descriptions, undifferentiated concepts, and incorrect answers were subdivided into interference by scientific misconception and lack of prior knowledge. Given that the misconceptions due to terminologies can be distinguished from the prior misconception, the misconceptions due to terminologies can be effectively prevented by changing the term itself. In addition, students were aware of the advantages and disadvantages of metaphorical terms, and the recognition of their level of understanding is expected to be a good starting point considering that recognizing their own misconceptions is the first step in correcting them. Terminologies in science education is always an important subject of discussions, striving to select the right term according to the times, and scientific terms may change. It is expected that the results of this study will be the basis for discussions on the modification of terms.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.328-339
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate the astronomy-related concepts formed by elementary school pre-service teachers and analyze the distribution of misconceptions. The study was conducted on 43 pre-service teachers enrolled in the second year of an elementary teacher training college located in the central region of Korea. As a result of the study, first, pre-service elementary school teachers' misconceptions about astronomy concepts showed a diverse distribution. In particular, pre-service elementary school teachers still had misconceptions regarding seasonal changes, which were pointed out in many previous studies. Second, pre-service elementary school teachers had formed concepts at the level of simple memorization of astronomy concepts and were having difficulty applying the concepts they knew to various cases. Based on these research results, future astronomy-related education should be directed toward understanding astronomical phenomena through the application and application of various cases rather than simple memorization, and astronomy education in teacher training courses and teacher training should also reflect this content.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.668-674
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• 2004

This study investigated Korean fifteen-year-olds' (mis)conceptions on the greenhouse effect based on the PISA results. Based on previous studies on students' ideas about the greenhouse effect, Korean students'understanding of the natural factors and human-induced factors of the greenhouse effect were analyzed. Students' misconceptions about causes of the greenhouse effect were also examined. In addition to CO2, Students mentioned CFCs, atmospheric pollution, water vapor and methane as greenhouse gases. Many students indicated that the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion have a causal relationship. Teaching implications of the misconceptions were also discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.31-42
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• 1992

The purposes of this study were to find out the degree of formation of the concept of density for the junior high students. The changing pattern of concept in acquiring the concept of density and the degree of development of INRC transformation ability related to the concept of density were also analyzed according to cognitive level and teaching method. The results of this study were as follows. 1) The experimental group were more effective than control group in the formation of the concept of density. 2) Even though students had been taught the concept of density, the various types of preconception were remained and persisted. Especially, the students at concrete level had persisted misconceptions and these misconceptions had been changed to the other misconceptions. 3) In the degree of the formation of the transformation ability of INRC group related to the concept of density in solid phase, the experimental group developed much better on both the abilities of Reciprocal transformation, Correlative transformation and the abilities to manipulate two variables such as volume and mass than control group. 4) The correlation coefficient between GALT score and achivement of the concept of density was 0.67. The correlation coefficient between achivement of the concept of density and the formation the transformation of INRC group related to the concept of density was 0.78.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.70-88
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a multiple cognitive conflict strategy at remedying student's misconceptions. Elementary students have many misconceptions about the brightness of the electric bulb in simple dual circuits. Most of the misconceptions can be summed up as 'the more batteries or the fewer bulbs, the brighter is the output.' The students have learned about the brightness of the electric bulb while connected to a battery in Grade 4 and the brightness of multiple electric bulbs in Grade 5. However, about $50%$ of the students remain with the firm misconception that the brightness of the bulb is related to the number of source batteries. This strong misconception may not lead to a conceptual change in the case of only one cognitive conflict. This study used a multiple conflict strategy while tackling the cognitive conflicts in the students as they solved the problems many times. It involved 160 grade 5 students. The result was they often changed their misconceptions and used more scientific thinking than the same grade students of other schools. It remains to be seen if this success will transfer to other schools and students and we intend on studying further the differences in students regarding this learning process.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.340-352
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to analyze effects of teaching materials for elementary science gifted conception about object recognition. Elementary science gifted have misconceptions that they can see in lightness. They can not explain how a shadow is made. This paper reports in-depth investigation on elementary science gifted's understanding of object recognition focusing on process of light. A program is developed to elementary science gifted in the subject matter. The tutorial emphasizing the process of light consists of pre-test, worksheet, and post-test. The Tutorial has 4 steps; darkness and light, light on things, light reached eyes, structure of the eyes. Each steps has 2~4 experiments. Through the tutorial, we expect their misconceptions can be changed into scientific conceptions. For the research and analysis, a questionnaire is posed to 39 elementary science gifted at M Elementary School in D Metropolitan City. The first method of product analysis makes a comparative study of pre-test, post-test score, and hake gain each test. As a result, total score of all student was raised. And hake gain of pre-test(II) is 0.6, hake gain of post-test is 0.68. It is Medium gain. Also, elementary science gifted could understand how we see through the tutorial emphasizing process of light. And their misconceptions can be changed into scientific conceptions.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.193-207
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to analyze trends in conceptual change research in the field of Earth Science education conducted in Korea and to provide them as basic data of future concept change research. The trends of conceptual change research were analyzed in terms of keywords, year of publication, source of research, purpose of research, subject, area of research, and research method. This study was carried out on a total of 126 conceptual change papers of Earth Science education published from 1989 to July 2017. This study showed the following conclusions: First, the conceptual change research papers used more the term 'conceptual change' than 'misconceptions' and 'preconceptions'. Second, the conceptual change paper has achieved a large amount of growth in the 2000s. Third, conceptual change research tended to proceed to the subject of master's dissertation. Fourth, there were a lot of researches to find out the misconceptions and change them into the right concept, the conceptual change paper used free response test for misconceptions, and cognitive conflict instruction model and CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction) teaching strategy for misconceptions. Fifth, elementary school students were studied the most. Sixth, the study of conceptual changes in the field of Earth Science was high in the astronomical and atmospheric areas. Finally, although quantitative analysis methods were used in the early days of research, in the 2010s, qualitative analysis methods were widely used. In this paper, we proposed research on conceptual change for pre- and in-service teachers, expansion of research on conceptual changes in various fields such as geology, oceanography, atmosphere in Earth Science, investigation of causes of misconception in Earth Science and research on individual's affective factors, and so on.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.spc5
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• pp.485-494
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• 2007

The aims of this study were to investigate the differences of the proportion of misconceptions and the reasons for selecting responses related to questions about small living things between talented and average students. The study subjects were made up of three groups. They were a class of 37 talented elementary students in science attending J National University of Education, a class of 37 talented students in science attending J City Office of Education, and a class of 33 average students attending J City. A questionnaire was composed of 20 test questions for examination of concepts related to small living things. The data obtained in this study was analyzed using a statistical program. The major results were as follows: In general, the level of the scientific concepts possessed by the talented students was much higher than that of the average students, especially in question 14. The reasons for the misconceptions which were revealed through this study were classified into vagueness of the language used, hasty decision and deduction making, using the wrong analogical inference, mass communications (TV or internet) and experimental differences between individuals. In terms of the reasons for the selection of a given response, the talented students had also a higher frequency in the 'science books for children' category than the average students, indicating that various kinds of science books for children have an influence on the formation of concepts on small living things. The misconception proportion of male students was 5.4% higher than that of female students in mean frequencies of all questions, although the difference was not statistically significant except for question 4. Data from this study may help teachers involved in education for gifted students to reconsider their conceptions on small living things.