A Probabilistic Model for Students’ Errors and Misconceptions on the Structure of Matter in Relation to Three Cognitive Variables

Tsitsipis, Georgios; Stamovlasis, Dimitrios; Papageorgiou, George

doi:10.1007/s10763-011-9288-x

Cited by 26 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…For example, the students stated that the particle size and the number of the particles increase after heating; particles can freeze, get smaller when they are cooled; when a balloon is cooled the particles would disappear and the particles combine with each other and their numbers decrease; solids do not have particles; and there is no space between solid particles. Similar results were reported by Tsitsipis, Stamovlasis Papageorgiou (2011). The purpose of their study was to identify the effect of logical thinking, field dependence/ independence, and convergent/divergent thinking on some specific students' misconceptions about the PNM.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Diagnostic assessment of student misconceptions about the particulate nature of matter from ontological perspective

Özalp

Kahveci

2015

Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.

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Student conceptions related with matter and the particulate nature of matter (PNM), are vital for advanced understanding in chemistry, and have been a research area of significant attention. Lacking in the literature are studies addressing chemical misconceptions from an ontological point of view.The purpose of the current study was to develop a diagnostic instrument by utilizing ontological categories as theoretical lens and to evaluate student understanding on the topic PNM through assessment based on the relationship between ontology and misconceptions. Aligned with content in the middle school curricula, an assessment instrument of 25 distractor-driven, multiple-choice items, 15 of which were two-tier, was constructed. Subsequent to content validity work, to utilize student feedback for the improvement of the items and the validity of the inferences, we pilot tested our instrument with 178 students. Cross-sectional survey methodology was employed for the larger assessment work across Grades 6-11. Data were collected from a randomly selected sample of 696 students attending primary and secondary schools. The overall trend emerged to be improved student knowledge with increasing grade level. The students most often tended to attribute the properties of macroscopic matter to its microscopic particles and had most difficulty in explaining dissolution at the particle level, confirming previous national and international findings. An understanding of misconceptions from an ontology perspective may further assist educators to enhance a radical conceptual change. Distractor-driven, two-tier multiple-choice items are envisioned to aid stakeholders in curriculum development and 2 implementation by illuminating student conceptions and ways of thinking.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Diagnostic assessment of student misconceptions about the particulate nature of matter from ontological perspective

Özalp

Kahveci

2015

Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.

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“…The findings agree with other related research (Danili & Reid, 2006;Tsitsipis, Stamovlasis, & Papageorgiou, 2012), and strengthen the role of such variables in science learning, which seem to operate at the very beginning stages of pupils' mental development. However, in order to avoid common reductionist flaws made in similar quantitative research, it is imperative to emphasize an epistemological remark.…”

Section: Discussion and Educational Implicationssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…However, in order to avoid common reductionist flaws made in similar quantitative research, it is imperative to emphasize an epistemological remark. What is learned from probabilistic models applied to cross-sectional research data (e.g., Rasch, 1980;Tsitsipis et al, 2012) is that the above cognitive variables do play a role and somehow they are involved in the mental processes, when children think or learn about the phenomena in question. No other information can be obtained; from a theoretical point of view these variables should be seen as constructs operationalizing certain mental recourses, which are activated accordingly.…”

Section: Discussion and Educational Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental representations of 12 year-old children about boiling and evaporation: A probabilistic association with convergent and divergent thinking

Tsikalas

Stamovlasis

Papageorgiou

2014

Ppej

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Summary. Students' understanding of physical phenomena is determined by their relevant representations, which are very crucial for science education. Since these representations are often incompatible with the scientific view, their functional role in the learning processes has been the main interest of a plethora of research work over the last decades. In the present research students' representations for boiling and evaporation are investigated and an attempt is made to correlate them with two cognitive variables, which have been shown to be involved in mental processes of learning science, namely convergent and divergent thinking. The study took place with the participation of 375 sixth-grade elementary school pupils (aged 11-12). Methodologically the ordinal logistic regression was implemented to correlate the categorical-type dependent variable with scale-type independent predictors. The results show that both convergent and divergent thinking are significantly associated with pupils' sufficient responses. Interpretation of the results and implications for science education are discussed.

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“…Level 2: Students understand particles as entities embedded in matter (Johnson, 2005). Between the particles is the actual substance Talanquer, 2009;Tsitsipis, Stamovlasis, & Papageorgiou, 2012). Students are not able to use their perception of particles to explain the structure of matter .…”

Section: Structure and Compositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing students’ progression in understanding matter: a review of previous research

Hadenfeldt

Liu

Neumann

2014

Studies in Science Education

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This manuscript presents a systematic review of the research on how students conceptualise matter. Understanding the structure and properties of matter is an essential part of science literacy. Over the last decades the number of studies on students' conceptions of matter published in peer-reviewed journals has increased significantly. These studies investigated how students conceptualise matter, to what extent students are able to explain everyday phenomena or how students develop an understanding of matter over time. In order to understand how students progress in their understanding of matter, what they understand easily and where they have difficulties, there is a need to identify common patterns across the available studies. The first substantial review of research on students' conception was provided in the 1990s with the aim to organise students' understanding of matter into four categories: students' conceptions about (1) chemical reactions, (2) physical states and their changes, (3) atoms, molecules and particle systems and (4) conservation. The aim of this review and analysis is to identify how subsequent research on students' conceptions of matter adds to this framework. The last comprehensive review of research on students' understanding of matter was carried out in the early 2000s. Thus, we analysed studies on students' conceptions of matter published within the last decade in five peer-reviewed journals of science education. Our findings suggest that research has moved from categorising students' conceptions to analysing students' progression in understanding matter. Based on our findings, we also identified typical pathways by which students may develop over time related to the four categories identified in previous reviews. As a conclusion, we present a model describing students' progression in understanding matter which may contribute to the development of a K-12 learning progression of matter.

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A Probabilistic Model for Students’ Errors and Misconceptions on the Structure of Matter in Relation to Three Cognitive Variables

Cited by 26 publications

References 51 publications

Diagnostic assessment of student misconceptions about the particulate nature of matter from ontological perspective

Diagnostic assessment of student misconceptions about the particulate nature of matter from ontological perspective

Mental representations of 12 year-old children about boiling and evaporation: A probabilistic association with convergent and divergent thinking

Framing students’ progression in understanding matter: a review of previous research

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