Identification of misconceptions on membrane physiology

Abstract

One of the main obstacles to science education is the widespread presence of misconceptions, which are persistent and generalized ideas that do not coincide with scientific knowledge, therefore becoming a major obstacle in the students' learning process. Biophysics is an essential interdisciplinary area in Physiology courses, but misconceptions tend to become more complex since several concepts need to be accessed for the subject to be understood. Therefore, this work aims to identify students' misconceptions about membrane physiology and use them to develop teaching strategies for undergraduate and graduate students. To do so, we used materials from interventions proposed to identify misconceptions and subsequent proposals of teaching strategies. Interventions were analyzed by the Committee for Ethics in Research on Human Beings (CEPSH-ICB/USP), approved under protocols 53043121.7.0000.5467 and 53059321.0.0000.5467. So far, surveys of students' misconceptions of various courses have been carried out, i.e., Veterinary Medicine, Biomedicine, students in a short extension course provided by the University of São Paulo, and graduate students. A survey is applied at the beginning of the courses, containing a series of statements about membrane physiology. Some of these statements are in line with the scientific context and others are common misconceptions among students. Students must respond whether they agree or disagree with the statements, following the Likert scale. Based on these statements, we created four clustering of difficulties, namely:- Related to the concept of transport;- Related to the structures that mediate transport;- Related to the moving forces of transport phenomena;- Related to general physiological (or biological) concepts.Throughout the disciplines, students receive individualized feedback on the classifications of difficulties found in their answers. At the end of the classes, students respond to a correction survey, where they can indicate whether they wish to change previously provided answers. With this data, it is possible to measure which topics were properly learned and which still require attention.It is possible to notice that the students demonstrate difficulties in applying the knowledge about ions in more complex contexts in which moving forces must be considered to determine the flow of these ions. Intervention analyzes showed that students have more difficulty in content involving the structures of channels and transporters, as well as reasoning about the moving forces of transport phenomena across the membrane, however, at the end of classes, they have less difficulty in topics associated with structures, but many misconceptions related to moving forces remain. Therefore, it is crucial to pay attention to these topics while teaching biophysics to improve students' understanding. The funding source of this work is the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq - BR). This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.