Abstract
In this study, the purpose is to determine the misconceptions and knowledge awareness of sixth grade students about the cell by using four tier Cell Conceptual Measuring Tool (CCMT). The study was conducted with 388 (184 female and 204 male) students studying at a state middle school in Izmir city center. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistical techniques were used. According to the results obtained, it was determined that the students had low conceptual understanding rates about the cell. In the other hand, it has been determined that students respond confidently to concepts that are incompatible with scientific facts as a result of analysis of student responses based on confidence levels. In this context, ten different misconceptions have been identified, four of them are strong-level and six are intermediate-level. As a result, the presence of strong-level misconceptions within the identified misconceptions indicates that there are misconceptions which are more tightly adhered to the cognitive structure of the students.
Highlights
Individuals, since the first years of life, to make sense of the world around them, construct many concepts by creating cognitive models (Allen, 2014)
Results according to the data obtained from the measurement tool, sixth grade students' conceptual understanding rates, true / false knowledge awareness, misconceptions, false positive and false negative, lack of knowledge and lucky guess rates are given
As a conclusion; when the data obtained from the study have been evaluated, it has been concluded that students have low conceptual understanding level about the subject of cell and cannot clearly distinguish between correct and wrong information about the subject
Summary
Individuals, since the first years of life, to make sense of the world around them, construct many concepts by creating cognitive models (Allen, 2014). Sometimes they prefer to construct related concepts meaningfully in their own way. Some of these (preliminary) information structured prior to formal education often does not correspond to scientific facts. In the literature; for these preliminary information, different terms such as naive knowledge (Klopfer, Champagne and Gunstone, 1983), pre-concept (Hashweh, 1988), alternative structure (Pfundt and Duit, 1991), alternative concept (Driver and Easley, 1978; Trowbridge and Mintzes, 1985), children's science (Osborne and Freyberg, 1985), alternative framework (Watts, 1981; 1983), alternative view (Stewart and Dale, 1990) and misconception (Helm, 1980) are used. Misconceptions are considered as information that prevents the acquisition of new knowledge and skills by clinging to the cognitive structure through individual experiences and as information incompatible with scientific opinions (Baki, 1999; Hasan, Bagayoko and Kelley, 1999; Wessel, 1999)
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