An analysis of teachers' and their students' views of the concept “Gravity”

Abstract

Teachers have been reported to have misconceptions in science (see Ameh and Gunstone, 1985, 1986) but there is no direct report which considers whether teachers w misconceptions are similar to those of the students they teach. Research in this area has very largely been focused on students. This is rather unfortunate because the teacher plays the crucial role in any educational enterprise. Teachers t understanding of science should be a paramount interest to researchers. Hewson (1981) has argued that while the research focus has been on students, teachers might have misconceptions which will require changing. According to Northfield (1986), current views of science education see the science teacher (not curriculum materials) as the primary focus for curriculum development. Efforts have been made to change students' views towards more scientific conceptions (e.g. Champagne et al., 1983; Osborne and Wittrock, 1983; Gunstone and Northfield, 1986). In most of these attempts the science teacher is not considered. Tisher (1986) has argued that educating primary and secondary school teacher is a major enterprise, yet teachers appear to receive only a small amount of attention from researchers. In this paper, we analyse the differences and similarities between teachers I responses and their students' responses to questions probing understanding of "Gravity". The aim is to establish whether or not students' responses reflect the beliefs of their teachers, and to consider whether teachers' concepts are superior to students' concepts.