An Investigation on the Similarity between Misconceptions of Junior Secondary
Biology Teachers and That of Their Students
Enshan Liu
The College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University
Mingyu LI
The Career Center，Capital Normal University
Abstract
The misconceptions of many scientific phenomena or scientific processes by
students have been demonstrated by abundant research, but the investigations into the
misconceptions of the teachers are still insufficient. Despite the revealed similarity
between students’ misconceptions and that of the teachers are shown by the existing
findings, a much deeper and more exhaustive study of the relationship between the
two still remains to be further explored. This presentation will report findings of an
empirical research study that examined common misconceptions on photosynthesis
and respiration held by junior secondary school biology teachers and their students.
This study shows: first, some biology teachers of the middle schools do have more or
less incorrect or incomplete understanding on the key concepts in biology; Second,
the misconceptions of teachers and that of their students do have some similarity in
between; Third, such similarity is featured as statistically positive correlation, and the
teachers’ misconceptions are very much likely to be the source of those of the students.
In the end, discussion and suggestions are given in relation to professional training
and the further researches.
Summary
Many researches show that students have their own ideas on many scientific
phenomena or scientific processes before they enter the science classroom. Most of
these ideas come from children’s daily life and quite some of them are incomplete or
misconception. It is not easy for the students to give up those misconceptions. In the
further study, misconceptions could be a big block for the students in learning
scientific concepts. If those ideas are not changed during the processes of school
learning, they will be kept in student mind for a long time. Researches show that even
though students take school science education, they might also keep the
misconceptions. So, it is an important part of the teaching task for the science teachers
to help students resist and change their misconceptions.
Till now, most of the researches are focused on diagnosing students’
misconceptions, while much less research on teachers’ misconceptions. One of the
reasons may be that researchers had a hypothesis that most of teachers are well
prepared in content knowledge in their pre-service education and had a sound content
knowledge before they start their teaching (Yip 1998). But, some researchers say that
teachers’ content knowledge is not good enough (Li and Liu 2008).
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Based on the literature review, this research focus on the following questions:
After 30 years of related researches have done, what is current situation on
teachers’ misconception in our junior secondary biology teaching force?
Is there a similarity between students’ misconception and that of their teachers in
China mainland as the previous international researches?
What’s kind of relationship that features this “similarity”?
Samples were taken from a capital city of Northern Province in China mainland.
In general, the education level of this city is at the average position in China. There
are 90 junior secondary schools located in this city which can be classified as three
levels. 11 sample schools were randomly taken from these three levels. From each
sample school, 2 or 3 biology teachers and the corresponding classes they taught were
chosen as sample. There are 40~50 students per class. Altogether, 30 biology teachers
and 30 classes including 1442 students were taken as sample.
The instrument used in this survey is a questionnaire with two-tier test items
about photosynthesis and respiration developed by David F. Treagust (1987).
Based on the survey, a number of findings can be concluded. First, after student
leant photosynthesis and respiration in biology classroom, many of them still keep the
misconceptions. About 94.3% of students have one or more misconceptions. Some of
their biology teachers keep misconceptions on photosynthesis and respiration as well.
Second, there is a similarity between the teachers’ misconception and that of their
students. This result is consistency with the previous researches in this area (Burgoon
et al. 2009; Kruger 1990; Iordanou 2003; Gomez-Zwiep 2008; Yip 1998; Nancy et al.
2005). This doesn’t simply mean that teachers have low percentage of holding
misconceptions will be certain to result in low misconceptions holding in their
students. On the contrary, the data from two test items shows that high proportion of
students kept misconception while majority of teachers take scientific ideas. This
finding is also consistent with the previous researches that poor teaching strategies
and skills used by teacher may also result in student misconceptions (Morrison and
Lederman 2003; Meyer 2004; Li 2007; Knuth et al. 2005). Anyhow, there is only two
items indicating the general pedagogical knowledge or conceptual teaching
knowledge (i.e. the second, third and fourth category) and skills impact on the
students’ conceptual understanding whereas eleven items indicating content
knowledge. So, comparing these two factors of teachers’ impact on students’ biology
learning, it seems that teacher’s misconception is much critical than that of less of
conceptual changing knowledge and skills.
Thirdly, further analysis on the similarity of teachers’ misconception and that of
their students reveals that: a) There is a significant positive correlation between the
teachers misconception and that of their students with most of the test items
(sig=0.035), except item 5 and 13; b) For the students with their teachers got no
wrong answer in the test (i.e. misconception free), their scores are significantly higher
than that of the kids taught by a teacher with misconceptions (sig=0.042); c) The
classes taught by the teachers with a sound biology knowledge generally show better
performance than that of students taught by teachers with misconceptions.
Based on detailed analysis on particular wrong answer of a test item by an
individual teacher and his/her students’ performance on the same item, it is clear to
see when teacher got wrong at an item his/her students take very high chance got
wrong answer too. This provides us a picture on what kind of similarity between the
misconceptions of teachers and that of their students. It also indicates that three
aspects of photosynthesis and respiration are the most challenging for both biology
learners and teachers, namely the concept of “photosynthesis & respiration”, the
concept of “matter transformation & energy transfer during respiration” and the
concept of “photosynthesis & autotrophy”.
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