생태계와 먹이그물 개념에 대한 초등학생 및 중학생들의 이해 수준 분석

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary and middle school students’ level of understanding on the concept of ecosystem and food web. To do so, the study collected data from 71 6th grade elementary school students and 102 1st grade middle school students, through the questionnaires consisting of four items. The students’ response was analyzed in terms of four levels of understanding of the concept of ecosystem and food web, respectively. The result shows that firstly, level 2 was most frequent among the students (69.1%), while level 1 was 15.5% and level 3 was 15.0%. Meanwhile, the highest level was only 0.6%, showing students’ difficulty in understanding the concept of ecosystem. Secondly, in terms of the understanding on the concept of food web, the level 1 was most frequent (52.1%), while the highest level was 14.5% and level 2 was 22.5%. The analysis shows that only small portion of the students who learned related concepts perceived the ecosystem as both having biotic and abiotic components. Furthermore, The tendency in students’ understanding to perceive the ecosystem same as the food web was stronger among the middle school students than the elementary school students. This suggests that too much emphasis on the food web when learning the concept of ecosystem might have a negative influence on students’ remembrance and understanding. Based on the analyses, the study suggests that there is a need for developing learning activities that provide students with various kinds of causality as happening in the ecosystem.