Assessing students conceptual understanding of heat and temperature

This research aimed to probe the students conceptions on heat and temperature of fourth year special science class students of Tarlac National High School. The researcher used the modified 20-item open-ended Thermal Concept Evaluation (TCE) as an instrument to draw out responses both written, and oral. In order to verify and provide profundity on the written responses of the respondents, an unstructured interview was conducted. A total of forty (40) fourth year special science class students served as respondents. The special science class curriculum is a science and mathematics oriented class, which offers elective science subjects. The results revealed that all of the students who took the TCE test were under the category of caloric viewpoint which their scores were below 75%. The prevalent misconceptions among the respondents were (a) heat is a substance, (b) Non-living things have no temperature., (c) Temperature could be transferred., (d) Bubbles in boiling water contains air, carbon dioxide, oxygen and hydrogen., and (e) A metal has the ability to absorb cold and heat