The impact of instructional strategy based on the triplet model of content representation on elimination of students misconceptions regarding inorganic reactions

Abstract

Recently we reported on the efficient teaching instruction based on integration of macroscopic, submicroscopic and symbolic levels of knowledge representation, from the standpoints of performance and mental effort. Based on obtained results a goal of this study was set – to identify misconceptions in the group of students trained in traditional manner and to determine whether the same misconceptions occur among students in the treatment group in the field of inorganic reactions. A two-tier test was used in the research, admin­istered by 189 second grade high school students. Analysis was performed by calculating the frequencies of choosing distractors in the tasks. Results revealed a total of nine misconceptions in the group of students trained in traditional manner, while only one misconception remained in the treatment group, after implementing the intervention program. It can be concluded that the applied intervention strategy proved to be very efficient in elimination of majority of misconceptions in the examined group of students.