PARTICULATE NATURE OF MATTER MISCONCEPTIONS HELD BY MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN TURKEY

Misconceptions are one the biggest troubles for both teachers and students. In order to have scientifically valid knowledge, students should have meaningful conceptual understanding. Researchers have been designing studies based on different teaching methods so as to reach beneficial outcomes to handle with misconceptions. In this study, the main purpose is to reveal misconceptions about particulate nature of matter held by middle and high school students in Turkey by examining the related studies done since 2010. In addition, another goals are to see which kind of data gathering instruments have been used frequently and to determine these studies have been implemented in which level, whether middle school or high school. With specific keywords and criteria, 21 related articles were reached and examined. The findings shows that open ended questionnaire or interview forms are the most frequent instruments in order to gather data in the studies which were done for diagnosing misconceptions about particulate nature of matter. The participants of studies are usually from middle school students. Lastly, misconceptions are common among students.