The Effect of Instruction of Knowledge on the Coordination between Naive and Scientific Concepts : Junior High School Students' Process of Acquiring the Scientific Concept of Electric Current

この論文は国立情報学研究所の学術雑誌公開支援事業により電子化されました。The present study investigates the effects of two types of knowledge on acquiring and retaining the scientific concept of electricity. The participants were 270 ninth grade junior high school students. One type of knowledge was about justification of scientific concepts of electric current and the other relates to modifying the wrong concept about electric current. Students were divided into four groups. All groups were given two problems; one was about the quantity of electrical current running a circuit, and the other was about the way to radiate heat from the heater. They engaged in the same problems as posttest immediately or a week later after receiving the instructions of knowledge, . The results of comparing answers before and after the instructions are as follows; in the problem of electric current, instruction of knowledge to justify scientific concept increases correct answers, while that of knowledge to modify the wrong concept does not. But in the problem of the heater, the result was the opposite. Both types of knowledge lacked the effect of retaining the scientific concept. These results imply that in the process of concept acquisition, students do not automatically coordinate the naive concepts that they possess with scientific ones