This study aims to examine the types of misconception of heat transfer shown by the fourth graders of elementary school, analyze changes of concept after class introducing the history of science and investigate the effects of class introducing it.
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This study aims to examine the types of misconception of heat transfer shown by the fourth graders of elementary school, analyze changes of concept after class introducing the history of science and investigate the effects of class introducing it.
The subjects of this study were 80 fourth graders at 2 classes of M elementary school in Gwangju-city and 40 of them were assigned to experimental group which conducted class introducing the history of science and remaining 40 to control group which had traditional class faithful to the 7th curriculum.
Items of questionnaire used for this study were selected from preceding researches related to heat transfer and they were restructured and revised for pretest. One more pretest was conducted additionally to understand the previous concept exactly.
Class introducing the history of science restructured and applied a variety of teaching methods including exploration of scientists and science historical discussion of scientific concepts as well as inserting story data of the history of science.
For class treatment, five classes were conducted at experimental and control groups respectively and 2 weeks later, posttest was conducted with the test paper of the same items as those of pretest.
The results of this study analyzing pretest and posttest are as follows;
First, it was found that it was difficult for students to understand the concept of heat and temperature from the microscopic view of molecular motion with the level of their cognitive development. While heat is considered as molecular motion energy by temperature gap in modern physics on the developmental stage of the history of science, it was difficult for students to understand molecular motion of substance on the stage of curriculum that the concept of particle was not taught. In experimental group teaching it, there was few students who could state or describe scientific concepts and contents.
Second, it was found that when elementary school students explain heat transfer, they had some important misconceptions. It includes 'cool air moves', 'iron transfers heat because it is burnt well by fire and wood doesn't transfer heat because it is not burnt well by fire', 'boiling of water is because bubble moves' and 'solar heat is transferred through air.' For treating these misconceptions, this study restructured science class with curriculum introducing the history of science and applied it to experimental class.
Third, experimental class having class introducing the history of science showed higher rates of students who answered using scientific terms compared to control class and the rate of students who acquired the right scientific concept and answered science questions using it was also higher than control class. But, students classified to category C in both experimental and control classes showed no changes of scientific concepts after class treatment and they had still misconceptions.
Consequently, to teach concept of heat transfer to elementary school students based on these results of research, curriculum should be restructured to carry out teaching content of particle concept of substance. In addition, it is expected that systematic curriculum for students to understand the microscopic concept of science like thermal energy in the context of the history of science shall be established.