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Some Student Misconceptions in Chemistry: A Literature Review of Chemical BondingAuthor(s): Haluk ÖzmenSource: Journal of Science Education and Technology, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Jun., 2004), pp. 147-159Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40188778 .

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Journal of Science Education and Technology, Vol. 13, No. 2, June 2004 (© 2004)

Some Student Misconceptions in Chemistry: A Literature Review of Chemical Bonding

Haluk Ozmen1

Students' misconceptions before or after formal instruction have become a major concern among researchers in science education because they influence how students learn new scientific knowledge, play an essential role in subsequent learning and become a hindrance in acquiring the correct body of knowledge. In this paper some students' misconceptions on chemical bonding reported in the literature were investigated and presented. With this aim, a detailed literature review of chemical bonding was carried out and the collected data was presented from past to day historically. On the basis of the results some suggestions for teaching were made.

KEY WORDS: chemistry; misconception; chemical bonding.

INTRODUCTION

Learning science is a cumulative process and each new piece of information is added to what students already know about the topic at hand. Research has shown that children bring to lessons a lot of preexisting (alternative) conceptions about scientific phenomena that can interfere with students' learning of correct scientific principles or concepts (Driver and Easley, 1978; Driver and Erickson, 1983; Fleer, 1999; Palmer, 1999, 2001; Posner et al, 1982; Taber, 2000). This understanding has caused science educators to be increasingly concerned about revealing students' difficulties prior to, during, or after the instruction in conceptualizing scientific knowledge and suggest- ing ways of remediation. Alternative conceptions may arise as a result of the variety of contacts students make with the physical and social world or as a result of personal experience, interaction with teachers, other people, or through the media (Gilbert et al, 1982; Gilbert and Zylberstajn, 1985; Griffiths and Preston, 1992). These ideas may be present before any teaching of a topic commences, and are often also

found after teaching has taken place. This constructivist view is the dominant paradigm of learning in science. According to constructivist theory of learning, knowledge is uniquely constructed by each individual learner and learners actively construct knowledge to make sense of the world, interpreting new information in terms of existing cognitive structures (Taber and Watts, 1997). The particular knowledge that is constructed by an individual will be affected by the learner's prior knowledge and experience and the social context in which learning takes place (Grayson et al, 2001; Von Glasersfeld, 1992).

Students preexisting beliefs influence how students learn new scientific knowledge and play an essential role in subsequent learning (Arnaudin and Mintez, 1985; Boujaoude, 1991; Driver and Oldham, 1986; Shuell, 1987; Tsai, 1996). Hunt and Minstrell (1997) stated that children's difficulties in science occur because students' conceptions before teaching are not taken into account and therefore communica- tion barriers between teachers and learners can not be overcome. These ideas are logical, sensible, and valuable from the students' point of view, strongly held by the students, but may be significantly different from accepted scientific viewpoints and may not be in conformity with the true or the scientific explanation (Osborne, 1982; Schoon and Boone, 1998).

department of Science Education, Fatih Faculty of Education, Karadeniz Technical University, 61335 Sogutlu-Trabzon, Turkey; e-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]

147

1059-0145/04/0600-0147/0 © 2004 Plenum Publishing Corporation



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And also, it is found that these beliefs are widely held by learners in various grade levels, they are fairly pervasive, stable, and resistant to change by conventional teaching strategies and are often held intact by children and adults alike even after the completion of years of formal science instruction (Champagne et aL, 1982; Clement, 1982; Guzzetti, 2000; Halloun and Hestenes, 1985a; Hewson and Hewson, 1984; Osborne and Cosgrove, 1983; Osborne and Wittrock, 1983; Stavy, 1991; Tsai, 1998; Wandersee et aL, 1994). According to Niaz (2001a), students' preconceptions that resist change can be considered as part of students' "hard-core" beliefs. Students' conceptions that are different from those accepted by the scientific community are variously labeled in the science education literature as misconceptions (Abimbola, 1988; Brown, 1992; Chambers and Andre, 1997; Din, 1998; Driver and Easley, 1978; Gonzalez, 1997; Griffiths, 1994; Griffiths et aL, 1988; Griffiths and Preston, 1992; Helm, 1980; Hewson and Hewson, 1984; Lawson and Thompson, 1988; Michael, 2002; Nakhleh, 1992; Nussbaum, 1981; Schmidt, 1997; Treagust, 1988), alternative conceptions (Astudillo and Niaz, 1996; Driver and Easley, 1978; Gilbert and Swift, 1985; Niaz, 2001a; Palmer, 2001; Taber, 2001; Wandersee et aL, 1994), preconceptions (Hashweh, 1988; Novak, 1977), alternative frameworks (Driver, 1981; Driver and Easley, 1978; Gonzalez, 1997; Kuiper, 1994; Taber, 1999, 2001), naive beliefs (Caramazza et aL, 1981), naive theories (Resnik, 1983), naive conceptions (Champagne et aL, 1983), children's scientific in- tuitions (Sutton, 1980), conceptual frameworks (Southerland et aL, 2001), children's science (Gilbert et aL, 1982; Osborne et aL, 1983), common sense understanding (Hills, 1983), common sense concepts (Halloun and Hestenes, 1985b), alternative conceptual framework (Taber, 1998), intuitive conceptions (Lee and Law, 2001), intuitive science (Preece, 1984), common alternative science conceptions (Gonzalez, 1997), students' intuitive theories (Boujaoude, 1992), presci- entific conceptions (Good, 1991), alternate perceptions (Carter and Brickhouse, 1989), students' descriptive and explanatory systems (Champagne et aL , 1982), and spontaneous knowledge (Pines and West, 1986). In the science education context, these terms refer to ideas that students have about natural phenomena that are inconsistent with scientific conceptions and reflect the complex nature and multiple causes of children's er- roneous conceptions as viewed by science educators. Although Wandersee et aL (1994) presented an analysis of the subtle distinctions in the usage of these terms, no consensus has been reached on the term of

choice. For simplicity, the term of misconception will be used in this paper and it means any concept that differs from the commonly accepted scientific understanding of the term.

Of course, chemistry is one of the most important branches of science and has been regarded as a difficult subject for young students by chemistry teachers, researchers, and educators. Although the reasons for this vary from the abstract nature of many chemical concepts to the difficulty of the language of chemistry (Ayas and Demirba§, 1997), there are two major reasons for students having difficulties in these areas; firstly, the topics are very abstract (Ben-Zvi et aL, 1988), and secondly, words from everyday language are used but with different mean- ings (Bergquist and Heikkinen, 1990). Because students' misconceptions in school sciences at all levels constitute a major problem of concern to science educators, scientist-researchers, teachers, and students (Johnstone and Kellett, 1980; Nussbaum, 1981), the identification of the students' understandings and misconceptions have been the goal of many of the studies carried out over the last years. Some of the conceptual areas in which most studies have been conducted are element, compound, and mixture (Ayas and Demirba§, 1997; Papageorgiou and Sakka, 2000), chemical reactions (Andersson, 1990; Ayas and Ozmen, 2002; Ben-Zvi et aL, 1987; Boo and Watson, 2001; Hesse and Anderson, 1992; Ozmen and Ayas, 2003), chemical bonding (Birk and Kurtz, 1999; Boo, 1998; Coll and Taylor, 2001, 2002; Coll and Treagust, 2001, 2002, 2003; Harrison and Treagust, 2000; Niaz, 2001b; Nicoll, 2001; Peterson et aL, 1986, 1989; Robinson, 1998; Taber, 1994; Tan and Treagust, 1999), chemical equilibrium (Banerjee and Power, 1991; Bergquist and Heikkinen, 1990; Chiu et aL, 2002; Gorodetsky and Gussarsky, 1986; Gussarsky and Gorodetsky, 1988, 1990; Hackling and Garnett, 1985; Hameed et aL, 1993; Huddle and Pillay, 1996; Maskill and Cachapuz, 1989; Niaz, 1995, 1998, 2001a; Pedrosa and Dias, 2000; Quilez-Pardo and Solaz-Portoles, 1995; Tsaparlis et aL, 1998; Tyson et aL, 1999; Van Driel, 2002; Voska and Heikkinen, 2000; Wheeler and Kass, 1978), atoms and molecules (Ben-Zvi et aL, 1986; Griffiths and Preston, 1992; Harrison and Treagust, 2000; Lee et aL, 1993; Nakhleh and Samarapungavan, 1999; Skamp, 1999; Tsaparlis, 1997), acids and bases (Bradley and Mosimege, 1998; Hand and Treagust, 1991; Nakhleh and Krajcik, 1994; Sisovic and Bojovic, 2000), mole concept (Furio et aL, 2000; Gorin, 1994; Nelson, 1991; Schmidt, 1994), solubility and solutions (Ebenezer and Erickson, 1996; Ebenezer and Fraser,



Misconceptions in Chemical Bonding 149

2001; Smith and Metz, 1996), evaporation and condensation (Bar and Gaglili, 1994; Chang, 1999; Tytler, 2000), and the paniculate nature of matter (Abraham et al, 1992; De Vos and Verdonk, 1996; Nakhleh and Samarapungavan, 1999; Ozmen et al. , 2002; Valanides, 2000).

As mentioned above, there are some topics that chemistry students find more difficult to understand. One active area of research on chemistry misconceptions is the topic of chemical bonding. This paper aims to synthesize students' misconceptions found in different studies at all levels.

Misconceptions About Chemical Bonding

Chemical bonding is one of the most important topics in undergraduate chemistry and the topic involves the use of a variety of models varying from simple analogical models to sophisticated abstract models possessing considerable mathematical com- plexity (Coll and Taylor, 2002; Coll and Treagust, 2003; Fensham, 1975). It is also a topic that students' commonly find problematic and develop a wide range of misconceptions. The concepts of electron, ioniza- tion energy, electronegativity, bonding, geometry, molecular structure, and stability are central to much of chemistry, from reactivity in organic chemistry to spectroscopy in analytical chemistry (Nicoll, 2001). And also, it is important for students to grasp these concepts in understanding why and how chemical bonds occur. Chemical bonding has been classified

into a series of three target systems; metallic, ionic, and covalent bonding. In the science education literature, there have been numerous studies to determine students' understanding and misconceptions about metallic, ionic, and covalent bonding. These studies have revealed prevalent and consistent misconceptions across a range of ages and cultural settings.

Butts and Smith (1987) reported that students were confused about covalent and ionic bonds. Some of the students they studied conceptualized the sodium and chlorine atoms as being held together by covalent bonds.

Peterson et al (1989) investigated Grade-11 and Grade-12 students' misconceptions of covalent bonding and structure. They found that these students did not acquire a satisfactory understanding of covalent bonding. Specifically, 33% of Grade-11 and 23% of Grade-12 held misconceptions regarding the unequal sharing and position of an electron pair in a covalent bond. These students seem to relate electron sharing to covalent bonding, yet did not consider the influence of electronegativity and the resultant unequal electron sharing. As a result of the analysis of the students' responses, some misconceptions were identified. These misconceptions were discussed under the categories of bond polarity, molecular shape, polarity of molecules, intermolecular forces, the octet rule, and lattices. The misconceptions identified are depicted in Table I.

In another study, Goh et al (1993) have investigated students' misconceptions including chemical bonding in chemistry and revealed that students

Table I. The Most Common Misconceptions of Covalent Bonding and Structure Held by Grade-11 and Grade-12 Students

Bond polarity • Equal sharing of the electron pair occurs in all covalent bonds. • The polarity of a bond is dependent on the number of valence electrons in each atom involved in the bond. • Ionic charge determines the polarity of the bond.

Molecular shape • The shape of a molecule is due to the repulsion between the bonds. • The V-shape in a molecule is due to the repulsion between the nonbonding electron pairs. • Bond polarity determines the shape of a molecule.

Polarity of molecules • Nonpolar molecules form when the atoms in the molecule have similar electronegativities. • Molecules of the type OF2 are polar as the nonbonding electrons on the oxygen form a partial negative charge.

Intermolecular forces • Intermolecular forces are the forces within a molecule. • Strong intermolecular forces exist in a continuous covalent solid. • Covalent bonds are broken when a substance changes shape.

Octet rule • Nitrogen atoms can share five electron pairs in bonding.

Lattices • High viscosity of some molecular solids is due to strong bonds in the continuous covalent lattice.



150 Ozmen

believed intermolecular bonding was stronger than intramolecular bonding. This was consistent with Peterson et aUs (1989) findings.

One case study conducted by Taber (1995) has investigated students' understanding of some very basic bonding concept and found misconceptions dealing with covalent bonding, metallic bonding, resonance structure, coordinate bonding, hydrogen bonding, and van der Walls forces. For example, it is claimed that learners invoke intramolecular bonding in ionic compounds. And also, it is stated that there is some evidence that learners appreciated the relationship between intermolecular bonding and physical properties such as boiling point. These results are consistent with Peterson and Treagust's (1989), Peterson et aVs (1989), and Taber's (1998) findings.

Taber (1997) has also investigated students' misconceptions dealing with ionic bonding. In the study, a small-scale survey was used to investigate how widespread were misconceptions of the ionic bond and he established that students had difficulty understanding ionic bonding. He stated that many chemistry students' understanding of ionic bonding: (i) overemphasizes the process of electron transfer, (ii) explicitly uses the notion of ion-pairs as molecules, (iii) is constrained by an appropriate consideration of valency, (iv) pays heed to an irrelevant electron history, (v) distinguishes between what are actually equivalent interactions between ions.

A later misconception, reported by Boo (1998), is that some students believe that a chemical bond is a physical entity. Boo suggests that this means that students believed that bond breaking releases energy and bond making involves energy input.

Robinson (1998) has outlined some of the general misconceptions related to chemical bonding. These misconceptions are listed in Table II.

Birk and Kurtz (1999) designed a study to diagnose student misconception over a large range of

chemical experience from high school to faculty and to determine if and when the misconceptions disap- pear. The test developed to collect data consisted of questions that examine understanding in six areas: bond polarity, molecular shape, polarity of molecules, lattices, intermolecular forces, and the octet rule. The most important misconception identified is that students believe that it is absent in polar molecular substances such as water. Students' misconceptions identified from the exam papers are depicted in Table III.

Barker (2000) has investigated students' understanding of chemical bonding and thermodynamics. She found that although basic ideas about covalent and hydrogen bonding appear to be learned by a majority of students, ions and ionic bonding continue to cause difficulties. Some students seem to imagine ionic compounds exist as discrete molecules like as covalent compounds and therefore think of ionic bonds as unidirectional and subject to the same rules of behavior as covalent bonds. Students think that covalent bonds are weak compared to ionic bonds and so break more easily. In addition, students reason that hydrogen chloride exists as discrete molecules in acid solution and when metal is added a bond is being formed between the metal and the chlorine atom, swapping patterns with the hydrogen.

In a study reported by Nicoll (2001), it was described the types of misconceptions related to electronegativity, bonding, geometry, and microscopic representations that undergraduate chemistry students hold. According to results, while students may have appeared to know about the concept of polarity, they did not associate it at all with electronegativity. For example, when a junior student, Janet, was asked to define polarity, she stated, "Polarity is like a polar substance is something that's neither ionic nor it is covalent." In another misconception on bonding, it was seen that several students appeared to confuse the definitions of ionic and covalent bonding. For

Table n. The General Misconceptions Related to Chemical Bonding • Chemical bonds form in order to produce filled shells rather than filled shells being the consequence of the formation

of many covalent bonds. • Atoms need filled shells. • A covalent bond holds atoms together because the bond is sharing electrons. • Molecules form from isolated atoms. • There are only two kinds of bonds: covalent bonds and ionic bonds. Anything else is just a force, "not a proper bond." • Ionic bonds are the transfer of electrons, rather than the attractions of the ions that result from the transfer of

electrons. The reason electrons are transferred is to achieve a full shell. • An ionic bond only occurs between the atoms involved in the electron transfer. Thus, sodium ion forms one ionic bond

to a chloride ion in solid sodium chloride and is involved in five forces with the other adjacent chloride ions. • Na+ and other ions are stable because they have a filled outer shell.




Table PI. Students' Misconceptions Identified From the Exam Papers Molecular shape

• The shape of the molecules is due only to the repulsion between bonding pairs. • The shape of the molecules is due only to the repulsion between nonbonding electron pairs. • Bond polarity determines the shape of a molecule.

Bond polarity • Equal sharing of the electron pair occurs in all covalent bonds. • The polarity of the bond is dependent on the number of valence electrons in each atom involved in the bond. • Ionic charge determines the polarity of the bond. • Nonbonding electron pairs influence the position of the shared pair and determine the polarity of the bond • The largest atom exerts the greatest control over the shared electron pair. • Electrons have a positive charge.

Polarity of molecules • Nonpolar molecules form only when atoms in the molecule have similar electronegativities. • Molecules of the type OF2 are polar as the nonbonding electrons on the oxygen form a partial negative charge. • A molecule is polar because it has polar bonds.

example, when he was asked to explain what covalent bonding was, a junior student, Duane, stated that "I just think of it as attractions between the negative and positive ends of an atom." During the interview, students were asked to explain why molecules adopted the geometries that they did. Students would mention incorrect reasons. For example, when he was asked to explain why water adopts a bent geometry, a fresh- man student, Bridgette, stated that "It's because the two lone pairs of electrons have higher energy levels or they are like stronger. They want more space and so they push the bonded pairs down because bonds are less energy, they are happy and they do not need that much space." When Casey, a senior student, was asked to pretend that she could see one molecule of water and to describe what see would see, she replied, "If you saw the electrons, they would be touching."

In a study conducted by Coll and Taylor (2001), it was aimed to determination of misconceptions of

chemical bonding held by upper secondary and tertiary students. At the end of the study, some 20 misconceptions were revealed, the most common being belief that continuous ionic and metallic lattices were molecular in nature, and confusion over ionic size and charge. Students' misconceptions identified in the study are depicted in Table IV.

Coll and Treagust (2001) investigated year-12 undergraduate and postgraduate Australian students' mental models for chemical bonding using semistruc- tured interviews comprising a three-phase interview protocol. In the study, students were presented with samples of metallic, ionic, and covalent substances, and asked to describe the bonding in the substance. Students' responses revealed that students use simple, realistic mental models for chemical bonding. In contrast, other studies reveal that learners' mental models of bonding become sophisticated and complex models they were exposed to during instruction (Coll and

Table IV. Students' Misconceptions for Chemical Bonding • Metallic bonding is weak bonding. • Metallic lattices contain neutral atoms. • Intramolecular covalent bonding is weak • Electronegativity comprises attraction for a

bonding. single electron. • Ionic bonding is weak bonding. • Molecular iodine is metallic in nature. • Continuous metallic or ionic lattices are • Ionic bonding comprises sharing of electrons,

molecular in nature. • The bonding in metals and ionic compounds • Ionic and metallic bondings contain an element

involves intermolecular bonding. of directionality. • The ionic radius of the sodium ion is greater than • Ions in close-packed metal lattices possess other

the chloride ion. than eight nearest neighbors. • The ionic radius of the lithium ion is greater than • Metal to nonmetal bonding in alloys is

the sodium ion. electrostatic in nature. • Polar covalent compounds contain charged • Ionic shape and packing is influenced by pressure,

species. • Molecular iodine contains 1 minus ions. • Intermolecular forces are influences by gravity. • The charged species in metallic lattices are nuclei • Glass is an ionic crystalline substance.

rather than ions.



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Taylor, 2002; Coll and Treagust, 2002, 2003). And also, they struggle to use their mental models to explain the physical properties of covalently bonded substances.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING

Bonding is the key to molecular structure, and structure is intimately related to the physical and chemical properties of a compound. An understanding of the concept of bonding is fundamental to subsequent learning of various topics in chemistry, including chemical equilibrium, thermodynamics, molecular structure, and chemical reactions. Therefore, an understanding of molecular structure based on atomic structure and bonding is crucial to subsequent understanding of chemical reactions. In a chemical reaction, there is a change in the bonding of the atoms, from the bonding in the reactants to the bonding in the products. Since the concepts of molecular structure and chemical bonding are built upon the fundamental principles of atomic structure, this understanding of chemical behavior at the atomic level appears important in understanding subsequent concepts in chemistry. But, although the students at each level have begun to learn this concept from earlier stages of their schooling, as mentioned above, there are a lot of studies reported that students have some difficulties in understanding chemical bonding and hold several misconceptions about it. These misconceptions appear to be resistant to attempts to change them over time, despite increased chemistry education. Students pass from grade to grade without fully grasping the underlying concepts of bonding.

There may be a lot of reasons in generating misconceptions. In the classroom teaching, teachers gen- erally use ball and stick models to represent chemical bonds. According to Butts and Smith (1987), the ubiq- uitous use of ball and stick models used to model ionic lattices may be instrumental in the generation of this misconception because learners' mistake sticks for individual chemical bonds.

A considerable amount of research has pointed out that the process of knowledge construction involves the replacement or reorganization of the conceptual framework. But for several concepts, such as chemical bonding, chemical equilibrium, acids and bases, students have difficulty changing their initial perceptions of the concepts. Especially, abstract concepts encountered in the study of chemistry provide increased opportunity for the development of formal

misconceptions. Although students at each level take several science classes during their schooling in order to learn various science concepts including chemical bonding, the presence of misconceptions in their explanation indicates their fragmented understanding of these abstract concepts. Sometimes students have such strong misconceptions that even after learning the correct concepts in the classrooms, they resist modifying their preexisting ideas. Instead, they try to interpret the new acquired knowledge using their preconceptions (Khalid, 2003).

It is obvious that "why misconceptions exist" is an important question in science education and in other disciplines. Although incorrect, imprecise, or incom- plete teaching may play an important role, according to Tsaparlis (1997), there must be a more fundamental cause that results in one or more of the following: i) the inability of most or many students to employ formal operations, ii) the lack of the proper knowledge corpus which is a prerequisite for meaningful learning, iii) the absence of the relevant concepts from long term memory. If someone thinks what can be done to improve student understanding of the basic chemistry concepts and to remediate their misconceptions, a starting point may be to remove some of the content from the first-year course and spend more time for fundamental concepts before moving onto more abstract ones, because it is also well-known that school curricula are very intensive. For this reason, some reform may be necessary in the chemistry curriculum at all levels to facilitate students' conceptual understanding of bonding topics. Driver and Oldham (1986) suggested a reduction in content at all levels of education in order to allow children time to construct concepts for themselves. And also, Nicoll (2001) suggests that teachers need to emphasize the transitions between the symbolic, macroscopic, and microscopic worlds so that students will develop their own mental models of bonding on these three levels.

Misconceptions arise not only from students' contacts with the physical and social world and from textbooks (Cho et aL, 1985), but also as a result of interaction with teachers (Gilbert and Zylberstajn, 1985). Teachers should also discuss the abstract concepts in their classrooms in order to eliminate students' misconceptions regarding these concepts. When the teachers were less knowledgeable, they were more likely to rely upon low-level questions and to give their students less opportunities to speak (Valanides, 2000). According to Bergquist and Heikkinen (1990), it is critical to provide students with opportunity to verbalize their ideas to promote




concept building and remediate misconceptions. Only then will deep-seated misunderstandings be identified, diagnosed, and addressed.

In addition, researchers indicate that students' difficulties and misconceptions in learning science concepts are due in part to the teachers' lack of knowledge regarding students' prior understanding and knowledge of concepts under study (Krishnan and Howe, 1994). The identification of possible sources of misconceptions is important because the instructional strategies which ultimately might prove effective in combating misconceptions might differ according to the type or source of misconception. One of the most fruitful outcomes of the studies on children's misconceptions is to alert teachers to students' difficulties in conceptualizing science knowledge and hence suggest more effective strategies for improving classroom instruction. Before teaching a concept, such as chemical bonding, redox, chemical equilibrium, acids and bases, teachers should be able to check the literature to find out what is known about misconceptions that students may bring to class and which teaching methods are the best in correcting these misconceptions. Such an approach would provide to teachers a chance to design better learning environments that help to develop concepts scientifically. But, unfortunately, in practice many chemistry teachers continue to teach their subjects as if none of these researches were un- dertaken and, as a result of this, there becomes a gap between research and teaching, and students pass from grade to grade without fully grasping these concepts and having extra misconceptions. The constructivist literature emphasizes that the teacher always has to teach from where the students are rather than where the teacher would like them to be, or where the curriculum suggests they should be (Taber, 2001). It is therefore recommended that at the start of the teaching sequence, students' ideas need to be made explicit to teacher and students (Driver and Oldham, 1986). The key problem here is that teachers expect research to be presented to them in a form they can readily apply because they are too busy doing their job to read the research literature (De Jong, 2000). For this reason, to explore and use research findings to improve chemistry learning, it is important to develop diagnostic instruments as well as improving curricular resources and teaching approaches.

In the literature, there are several techniques and instruments, such as concept mapping, interview about instances and events, interview about concepts, prediction-observation-explanation, drawings, word association, pencil-and-paper diagnostic instruments

based on multiple-choice items, two-tier multiple- choice tests (Peterson et aL9 1989; Schmidt, 1997; White and Gunstone, 1992), that can be used by teachers in their classroom environment in identifying misconceptions of science phenomena. Of these many approaches, interviews, and multiple-choice diagnostic tests are most common methodologies and have acquired strong support as a viable approach (Osborne and Gilbert, 1980; Peterson etaL, 1989). But according to Treagust (1988), conventional multiple-choice tests do not adequately assess student understanding. Al- though multiple-choice tests have been used to evaluate students' content knowledge, they have some lim- itations with determining students' reasoning behind their choices. However, many instructors agree that one of the best ways to measure student understanding is to assess how well they can explain a concept to someone else (Teichert and Stacy, 2002). Therefore, multiple-choice questions can be validated by asking students to give reasons for their answers. In addition, two-tier multiple-choice items to question based on student reasoning, including known misconceptions, appear to provide a feasible approach for evaluating students' understanding, and for identifying commonly held misconceptions (Peterson and Treagust, 1989). The items in two-tier multiple-choice diagnostic instruments are specifically designed to identify students' misconceptions and misunderstandings in a limited content area. The first part of each item con- sists of a multiple-choice content question having two or three choices. The second part of each item contains a set of four or five possible reasons for the answer to the first part. Incorrect reasons are derived from actual students misconceptions gathered form literature, interviews, and free response tests (Tan et al, 2002). In addition, this type of test is more readily ad- ministered and scored than the other methods, and are useful for classroom teachers (Tan and Treagust, 1999). But on the other hand, objectively scored two- tier tests also have disadvantage of detecting far fewer conceptions than students may actually possess within a content domain. By contrast, open-ended two-tier tests allow teachers to explore each student's reasoning patterns and supporting conceptions (Voska and Heikkinen, 2000). In the literature, although there are a few diagnostic instruments that teachers can use in the classroom regarding chemical bonding (Birk and Kurtz, 1999; Goh et al, 1993; Peterson et ai, 1989; Peterson and Treagust, 1989; Tan and Treagust, 1999; Treagust, 1988), most reported strategies involve a combination of multiple-choice tests, interviews, or other tasks. Simple and objectively scored diagnostic



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assessment tests that can be used in the classrooms should be also developed by teachers to determine the level of students' understanding and misconceptions. And also, teachers should be informed about determining and alleviating of misconceptions and using appropriate teaching strategies with in-service training courses. In another words, teachers should be equipped with the necessary capabilities of identifying their own students' conceptions and implement- ing teaching approaches that promote conceptual understanding among their students. In parallel to this, teacher education department of universities should give special attention in this regard.

Training should help students to relate new information to prior knowledge, to integrate information for one subject area into another, and to relate classroom information to everyday experiences to help those students become meaningful learners who are better able to retain and use information in novel situ- ations (Prawat, 1989). A majority of teachers and even professors use teacher-centered teaching strategies to teach science (Lord, 1999; Yip, 2001). To be success- ful in examinations, pupils are trained to be good at retrieving factual information and the rote application of algorithms. These traditional teaching strategies provide conceptual information to the students who learn the material, memorize it, and reproduce it on the day of examination (Khalid, 2003). It is well known that traditional teaching strategies are ineffec- tive to help students with a complete understanding of the abstract concepts such as chemical bonding, chemical equilibrium, the mole concept, chemical kinetics, acids and bases, atoms and molecules, to build correct conceptions, to alleviate misconceptions, and to promote conceptual change (Westbrook and Marek, 1991). As students learn more about chemistry their cognitive structure is expected to develop in at least three ways: the range of their concepts will increase, the level of sophistication of their concepts will deepen, and their concepts will become better integrated with each other (Taber and Watts, 1997). Therefore, teaching methods used in classrooms by teachers should support these expectations.

According to constructivist view of learning, meaningful learning occurs when the learners actively construct their own knowledge by using existing knowledge to make sense of newly gained experiences. Taber (2000) has stated that the first step in a constructivist learning approach is to make the teacher and student aware of the learner's current ideas. Teaching can then be planned that challenges misconceptions, and provides students with the op-

portunities and rationale for conceptual restructur- ing. In this situation, teachers can play an important role in teaching chemistry concepts. Teachers can help students eliminate their misconceptions by providing an adequate knowledge base and clear understanding of these concepts. This view highlights the impact of learners' preconceptions and misconceptions on the process of developing new knowledge. Because misconceptions affect subsequent learning negatively (Bodner, 1986), the correction or remediation of students' misconceptions is as important as identification of them. In the literature, there are several methods used in remediation of the misconceptions. Among these, conceptual change approach has a large usage area in science education (Posner et al., 1982; Sanger, 2000). If a concept's meaning has been completely re- moved and replaced by something else that is incom- parable to the existing meaning, it would be considered a conceptual change (Chiu et ai, 2002). Within this perspective, learning is depicted as a process of conceptual change. This approach represents an alternative approach designed to encourage students to alter misconceptions. This approach suggests that four conditions must exist before a conceptual change is likely to occur (Chambers and Andre, 1997; Posner et al , 1982): (i) students must become dissatisfied with their existing conceptions; students must have experiences which lead them to lose faith in the ability of their current conceptions to solve problems, (ii) the new conceptions must be intelligible; the student must be able to understand sufficiently how experiences can be structured by the new concept, (iii) the new conception must appear plausible; any new concept adopted must at least appear to have the ability to solve the problems generated by its predecessors, (iv) the new conception must be fruitful; it should have the capacity to open up new areas of inquiry.

On the basis of this model, many specific instructional strategies have been proposed to help students change their misconceptions. Among these, refutational texts and conceptual change texts have become popular for the last two decades. As stated by Chambers and Andre (1997), the major difference between the refutational text model and the conceptual change text involves whether students are asked to make a prediction about a situation. In the conceptual change model, students are asked to predict what would happen in a situation before being presented with information that demonstrates the incon- sistency between common misconceptions and the scientific conception. In the refutational text model, common misconceptions are contrasted to scientific




conceptions, but the students is not asked first to make a prediction about a common situation before the refutation is given. Although these strategies are well-known and most useful strategies, very few science teachers are aware of conceptual-change teaching techniques at present time (Hesse and Anderson, 1992). That the teachers should be informed about using of these strategies may be very useful for them to help students change their misconceptions.

Among many instructional materials, textbooks are most important information sources for students. Many research studies have found that the textbooks used in schools have inadequate or sometimes incorrect information (Soyibo, 1995). Therefore, textbooks authors should help teachers become aware of the common misconceptions students bring to the chemistry classroom. And also, taking into account the apparent preeminence of textbooks in shaping curricula, and the contribution of instruction for dis- semination of misconceptions on important chemistry topics (Haidar, 1997), it is sensible and adequate to ini- tiate a coherent programme beginning with textbooks followed by programmes with chemistry teachers (Pedrosa and Dias, 2000). In parallel to textbooks, guide materials and new teaching materials that may help to remedy students' misconceptions should be devised and presented to teachers' usage.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very grateful to Dr Mansoor Niaz for his proofreading, correction, and comments.

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