No abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate and compare level of understanding of eighth-grade students and student teachers in their final year in the science education department related to concepts of solution, gas, and chemical change. A qualitative and quantitative methodology was used for this investigation. Open-ended questions and group discussion methods were used for data collection. Moreover, to examine how students visualize these concepts, students were asked to make drawings. The questions were administered to 50 students in Grade 8 and 50 student teachers in the science education department. Group discussions were conducted with 6 students and 6 student teachers. There were surprisingly similar alternative conceptions by both the students and the student teachers despite more instruction on these topics in the education of the student teachers. Based on the results, some suggestions are presented. ß 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 2005

No abstract

We constructed the PDEODE (Predict-Discuss-Explain-Observe-Discuss-Explain) teaching strategy, a variant of the classical POE (Predict-Observe-Explain) activity, to promote conceptual change, and investigated its effectiveness on student understanding of the evaporation concept. The sample consisted of 52 first year students in a primary science education department. The students' ideas were revealed by a test consisting of eight questions. The PDEODE teaching strategy was designed on the basis of the students' preconceptions. Conceptual change in students' understanding of evaporation was evaluated by administering the same test as pre-, post and delayed post-test. The test scores were analyzed by both qualitative and quantitative methods. Statistical analysis using general linear model repeated measures of student test scores point to statistically significant differences in pre-, post-, delayed post tests and total scores (p<0.05), suggesting that the strategy helped students to achieve a better conceptual understanding. Further, no statistically significant differences were observed between post-test and delayed post-test scores, suggesting that teaching strategy enabled students to retain their new conceptions in their long-term memory.

The aim of the present study is to elicit students' understanding of the particulate nature of matter via a cross-age study ranging from secondary to tertiary educational levels. A questionnaire with five-item open-ended questions was administered to 166 students from the secondary to tertiary levels of education. In light of the findings, it can be deduced that the number of students' responses categorized under the "sound understanding" category for each item increased with educational level, except for U1. Also, it can be concluded that students' specific misconceptions decreased steadily from SHS1 to SHS3, except for item 4, but there is surprisingly a clear increase at U1.