Резюме. The aim of this study was to investigate the high school students’ misconceptions about the magnetism. A diagnostic test concerning this concept was developed and administered to 98 eleventh grade students. Students are 16-17 years old. Students’ respondents for the test were analyzed. This study identified a number of misconceptions about the magnetism. We suggest that the results can be utilized in research that develops teaching strategies to overcome students’ misconceptions.

Ключови думи: misconceptions, magnetism

Introduction

Science educators recognize that students have their own ideas about some of the phenomena of interest in science and that those ideas usually differ from scientists’ currents views (Cosgorova, 1995). The present trends in education emphasize the students, as opposed to the instructor, as the main object of the teaching process (Pınarbaşı & Canpolat, 2003). Teachers have been well informed by researchers that students often have incomplete or inaccurate prior knowledge that interferes with their ability to learn scientific concepts. As a result, it is known that students of all ages can have inaccurate alternative conceptions in all areas of science. In recent years, research has focused on identifying and characterizing students’ understanding and difficulties about many science topics in science education (Janiuk, 1993). Research has consistently shown that students do not come to the classroom as blank slates rather that they come with a well-established understanding about how and why everyday things behave as they do (Posner et al., 1982). During instruction, learners generate their own meaning based on their backgrounds, attitudes, abilities, and experience. According to the cognitive model, students build a sensible and coherent understanding of the events and phenomena in their world from their own point of view (Osborne & Wittrock, 1983). Furthermore, recent studies have revealed that this understanding, whether correct or incorrect, influences how students learn new scientific knowledge. There have been many studies concerning alternative conceptions about science concepts (Pfund & Duit, 2000).

Misconceptions are very common in all topics of physics, such as mechanics (e.g., Clement, 1982; Eryılmaz, 2002; Minstrell, 1982; Towbridge & McDermott, 1980; 1981; Vionnet, 1979; Dilber et al., 2009; Zhou et al., 2015), electricity (Cohen et al., 1983; Dupin & Johsua, 1987; Fredette & Lochead, 1980; Heller & Finley, 1992; Idar & Ganiel, 1985; Maloney et al., 2001; Sencar & Eryılmaz, 2004), optics (e.g., Feher & Rice, 1992; Goldberg & McDermott, 1986; 1987, Favale & Bondany, 2014), and thermodynamics (e.g., Athee, 1993; Bar & Travis, 1991; Ericson, 1979; Shayer & Wyllam, 1981), magnetisim (Yilmaz & İnce, 2012; İnce, 2012; Miokovic et al., 2012; Cheng & Brown, 2015). One of the most important outcomes of research on misconceptions is that educators need to consider students’ misconceptions for meaningful learning to take place (Gil-Perez & Carrascosa, 1990; Hewson & Hewson, 1983). Meaningful learning is described as a learner’s ability to interpret and use knowledge in situations that are not the same as those in which it was initially learned (Novak, 2002). Misconceptions are very stable, and traditional instruction does not encourage meaningful learning; hence, it is not easy to replace them with scientific conceptions (Clement, 1993; Hestenes, 1987; Novak, 2002). Changing misconceptions is not simply adding new information to an individual’s mind, but care should be taken to account for the interaction of new knowledge with existing, provided that the new may be replaced with the existing (Hewson & Hewson, 1983). Replacing the existing faulty knowledge with the scientific one is one of the aims of conceptual change strategies (Hewson & Hewson, 1983; Novak, 2002; Posner et al., 1982). Many researches about students’ misconceptions in science state that traditional instruction (transfer of knowledge) is ineffective in correcting misconceptions and does not usually result in meaningful learning (e.g., Dykstra et al.,1992; Hestenes, 1987; McDermott & Shaffer, 1992; Mestre, 1991; White, 1992). Furthermore, all state that most of students’ misconceptions exist after instruction. It is not easy to change students’ beliefs. After the instruction, students might use scientific knowledge in school and give correct answers to standard questions, but in unfamiliar situations or outside the school they will use their own alternative beliefs (White, 1992).

Students often develop misconceptions about scientific concepts. These misconceptions have serious effects on subsequent learning. Therefore, it is important to identify students’ preconceptions in order to plan future teaching activities. This study examined students’ understandings of magnetism concepts.

The key research question in this study was therefore determined as: what are high school students’ misconceptions regarding magnetism?

Method

The study

The subjects of the present study consisted of 98 high school students (53 boys and 45 girls) from two classes of a physics course taught by the same teacher in a high school in Turkey. Students’ ages ranged from 16 to 17 years.

Known and most widely used Force on Force and Motion Concept Test (FCI) which was developed by (Hestenes et al., 1992). At the same time, it is known about magnetism and a widely used test that is not available (Demirci & Cirkinoğlu, 2004). In this study, we searched to student’s misconception about the magnetism. The subjects are magnets, magnetic field, magnetic poles, charged particle in a magnetic field, magnetic field of a wire, magnetism properties of the matter, magnetic field effect of electric current concepts. Therefore, a diagnostic test which can measure the magnetism concepts was developed. The questions in this test had three steps. In the first steps, the students are asked to explain what an event is as an achievement. In the second step, the reason of his/her answer to the first step is asked and in the third step, the students are asked to tell how sure she/he is about the answers given to the first step. For the students who have different ideas on the first two steps, a blank box is added (one example see appendix).

All questions were pilot tested and the required modification was made prior to the administration of test. The content validity of the test questions was assessed by one physics professor and two research assistants. This test was administered to 98 high school students enrolled in Electric and Magnetism Unit at 2015.

In this study, the responses of the students who gave wrong answers to the first two steps and marked “very confident” choice were accepted as misconceptions. The responses like “Fairly confident”, “Not confident” and “Just guessed” were not accepted as misconceptions because the students who gave such answers may have forgotten the subject or may have given such responses because of the lack of knowledge. Students’ responses to the diagnostic test were analyzed.

Findings

Throughout the study process, misconceptions about magnetism are determined as follows (Table 1).

Conclusion and implications

There are only a few studies on misconceptions about magnetism in the literature. The findings of this research revealed that students have inadequate understanding of the concepts of magnetism. The results of the study revealed that the students did not conceptualize the concepts of magnetism. According to the results, students had 15 misconceptions about magnets, magnetic field, magnetic poles, charged particle in a magnetic field, magnetic field of a wire, magnetism properties of the matter, magnetic field effect of electric current concepts. The findings of this study do yield more insight into how high school students think about the concepts of magnetism, and suggest that traditional teaching methods are ineffective in helping students to learn these concepts scientifically. Teaching strategies and assessment instruments should be developed to engage the students more actively with such concepts.

Conductor X frame situated in a magnetic fields perpendicularly as shown Figure-I. Changes according to the time chart of the total magnetic flux from the frame surface as shown in Figure II. According to this, what can we say about the induction current passing from the shape at I and II time intervals?

If you have different ideas, please write into the following blanks with the reasons

How confident are you that your answers to this questions are correct?

• very confident, • not confident, • fairly confident, • just guessed.

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