Pre service science teachers misconceptions about density and buoyancy

Determining students’ difficulties has been one of the major concerns in science education. Educators in the late 1970s realized that students have some misconceptions. Correspondingly, researchers conducted studies to detect them. Similar to other disciplines, individuals have misconceptions about physical systems. Misconception studies generally focused on light, sound, electricity, force, and motion. However, limited studies were found about density and buoyancy. Since these physical concepts are important for meaningful learning and teachers are one of the misconception resources, the study aimed to detect pre-service teachers’ misconceptions. Case study was chosen since the researchers seek in-depth information for the understandings about the concepts. 6 pre-service elementary science teachers were participated and semi-structured interview were conducted. The interview questions were constructed by the researchers and two experts examined and provide feedbacks. The interview has two parts aiming to detect misconceptions reported in literature. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed. The results indicated that similar misconceptions were observed among the pre-service teachers. Moreover, they had some difficulties defining these physical concepts and lack of explaining the scientific phenomena related to those concepts. This study may give some insights for further studies in a way that it may highlight formation and elimination of misconceptions