[[alternative]]Investigating the Junior High School Students’ Conceptions of Solutions by the Learning Cycle Instructional Strategy

[[abstract]]The main purpose of this study is to investigate students’ recognition of correlated concepts of solutions. At the beginning of this study, the students’ concepts of solutions were collected by interviews and open-end questions with a group demonstration technique. Then, an instructional strategy for the correlated concepts of solution was designed. At the end of this study, the students’ learning interests and attitude for this teaching model were evaluated by questionnaire. The subjects were 433 students of grade 7 to grade 9 in the junior high schools. They were divided into the experimental and the control groups. The main findings of the study were: 1. Students held unclear concepts about the definition of solution, and they were used to explain dissolution by daily life experience and to describe the microphenomenon of the solutes in solution by the macroscopic point of view of the solutes. Many students were influenced by the different ways of dissolution and had many misconceptions about the concept of homogenous of solute particles. In the conservation concepts of solute particle, many students thought that the volume and numbers of solutes would be changed, because heat made the solute melt further in the solution. 2. Comparing the difference in the recognition of the concepts of solution, conservation and concentration of particles in gaseous solute were progressed as grade growth. 3. Comparing the improvement between the experimental and the control group, it revealed that the instructional model would assist students’ understanding the conceptions of solutions, especially in the particle concept of solute and the conservation concepts of solute particle. Besides, in this research, it found that the effectiveness of teaching for the eight grade students were better than that of seven grade students, and the nine grade students were better than that of the eight grade students. 4. Most students were interesting and assumed a positive attitude toward this learning cycle instructional activities and they thought the contents in this instructional unit would be useful for their learning of physical science in the future.