The purpose of this study is to investigate the preconceptions and misconceptions of elementary school students on volcanoes through science writing activities on volcano-related subjects, to analyze the types, and to provide basic materials useful fo...
The purpose of this study is to investigate the preconceptions and misconceptions of elementary school students on volcanoes through science writing activities on volcano-related subjects, to analyze the types, and to provide basic materials useful for developing effective teaching programs and be utilized as materials of teaching and learning on volcanoes in the future. For this, 36 fifth-graders of G elementary school located in Gunpo, Kyunggi-Do, were selected to be the subjects, and five-session activities of science writing were performed on five themes including the definition, causes of origination, erupted materials, changes in earth surface, and influences of the volcano. The contents of science writing activity were analyzed, answers were categorized according to their types, and the number of answerers was given a percentage by categorized types.
The results of this study are as follows. First, there was a tendency toward utilizing various preconceptions in order to solve the assignments of science writing activities. Because the students in this study had no experience in learning about volcanoes in science class in school, many of them attempted to compare and explain cases of simple references or similar cases on the preconceptions without appropriate understanding of the association and causal relationship among the preconceptions used for solving the writing assignments. Second, the types and causes of the misconceptions of students were shown through the assignments of science writing activity. The types and causes of the students on each theme are as follows. Misconceptions from the Chinese characters for the word volcano on the definition of volcano, misconceptions from the misrecognition on causes of temperature increase on the causes of volcano origination, misconceptions from the methods of recognition of pyroclastic materials on the erupted materials, misconceptions related to melting of the Earth's surface caused by heated magma on the changes in earth surface, and misconceptions mentioning only one of the negative aspects of volcanoes on the influence of volcanoes were frequently analyzed.
From the results of this study, science writing activities were effective on understanding the causes of misconception formation because the learners themselves were asked to explain how they obtained misconceptions. Appropriate utilization of the activity on development of science material programs related to volcano for elementary school students and on conception learning guides of students may be helpful for students to establish reasonable conceptions. Also, as the students in this study had no experience in learning about volcanoes in school, they might be given the opportunity to recognize their own preconceptions and errors of such preconceptions. As students can concretely express their conceptions through science writing activities, teachers may utilize science writing in the teaching process as a method of assessing degrees of learning of the students.