Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate what elementary teachers know about students' science misconceptions and how the teachers plan for and address their students' misconceptions in instruction. The sample included 61 teachers who participated in a teacher training program irrelative to science education. A questionnaire into which Gomez-Zwiep's semi-structured interview questions was transformed was used to examine the teachers' understandings of definition, origin, examples, and so on of science misconceptions, and their instructional strategies for addressing their students' misconceptions before and while instruction. The results showed that many teachers (about 60%) did not have appropriate understanding of students' misconceptions, that the majority of the teachers (about 75%) did not consider misconceptions at all before teaching science lessons, and that almost all the teachers (about 90%) did not know particular strategies specifically designed for misconceptions.

Keywords

• science education;
• misconception;
• instructional strategy;
• teacher education