The effects of e-learning units on 13-14-year-old students’ misconceptions regarding some elementary chemical concepts Scientific paper

Abstract

Students’ misconceptions in science can lead to a range of learning difficulties if the teacher does not choose the appropriate teaching strategies to reduce their frequency. In this paper, 13–14-year-old students’ misconceptions regarding structure and states of matter, pure substances, and mixtures are exp­lored. The teaching strategy with E-learning material was applied to examine its effects on the frequency of misconceptions. The research was conducted in urban schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina with 7^th- and 8^th-grade students. Find­ings pointed to the misconceptions originating in transferring the macro­scopic observations into the submicroscopic level and in misinterpretation of the size of particles. Students who used E-learning material at school mostly had lower percentages of misconceptions in comparison to students from the control group and students who accessed the same E-learning material from their home. This indicates that the E-learning strategy could have promising results if applied more extensively at schools. This study aims to direct teach­ers’ atten­tion toward applying E-learning in chemistry teaching, for students to gain sci­entifically accepted knowledge and to reduce the occurrence of miscon­cept­ions.