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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 16, Issue 2, Article 2 (Dec., 2015) |
This study measured the pre-service science teachers’ scientific knowledge level, lack of knowledge level, lack of confidence level, and misconception level related to floating and sinking. Compared to the other studies in the literature that used different methods, the ratio of the misconceptions was relatively low because the three-tier misconception test was able to differentiate misconceptions by considering the students’ level of scientific knowledge, lack of knowledge scores, and lack of confidence scores. The students’ low scores on the third tier distinguished the students’ lack of knowledge from their misconceptions (see Table 4). In addition, the “relative force approach” was defined for the first time in this study.
Relative force approach is the type of topic about which the majority of the teachers have misconceptions. The pre-service teachers had high levels of misconceptions, high lack of knowledge scores, and low levels of scientific knowledge about the buoyancy of an object. The most striking finding in this study was that the majority of the pre-service science teachers did not know that the magnitude of the buoyant force of a floating object was equal to the object’s magnitude of weight. A similar situation is also true for the relationships between the pressure force, the buoyant force, and sinking and floating.
The pre-service science teachers’ second-highest level of misconception was about the relationship between the buoyant force and pressure force. In addition, the pre-service science teachers had the second-lowest levels of scientific knowledge in the pressure force topic. The scientific knowledge missed by the pre-service science teachers was that an object would float if the buoyancy force exerted on it by the fluid balanced its weight. This finding showed that the pre-service science teachers either did not know the relationship between the buoyant force and the pressure force or used faulty reasoning. Based on these findings, when teaching the floating-sinking topic, the teachers should place a special emphasis on RFA and pressure force. The findings related to RDA were also quite important.
Even though RDA was a part of science curricula and textbooks, the pre-service teachers used rote memorization to answer the questions in this study. The pre-service science teachers had the tendency to use only the liquid’s density instead of comparing the liquid and objects’ densities. Besides, the majority of the pre-service science teachers in this study had the misconception of using RDA as density. Although RDA was included in many resources (i.e., textbooks and research), during the development of the three-tier test, the factor analysis, which was conducted using SPSS, revealed the objects’ shape, their hardness or softness, and the drop-off position as separate factors. In this study, the pre-service science teachers, similar to the RDA category, had faulty reasoning. On the basis of this faulty reasoning, the pre-service teachers did not fully master RDA.
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