Misconception in Chemistry Education and Practices to Eliminate Them: Literature Analysis

Abstract

Concepts can be examined in two groups as abstract and concrete ones. While concrete concepts are improved as a result of students’ experiences, it is considerably challenging for students to perceive abstract concepts. Since chemistry includes abstract concepts largely, it is considered to be hard to comprehend as a class by students. In fact, studies confirm this thought. On this particular issue, based on literature, it is clearly stated that students present themselves in learning environment, having some sort of thoughts and acknowledgments which are scientifically incorrect by a majority. The false information or acknowledgments are called misconception in the literature. Furthermore, it is also indicated that it is too hard to eliminate such misconceptions via the traditional teaching methods. Since each student constructs his/her own knowledge, understanding and concepts in accordance with his/her ability and experience, what matters here is, if prior knowledge of student involves any misconceptions, to identify and eliminate misconceptions. In this context, researches on identification and then elimination of misconceptions make a significant contribution to the chemistry education. In this paper, misconceptions determined and identified in literatures on subjects considered to be abstract, complex and hard to understand for students in the field of chemistry education are studied, namely solubility equilibrium, covalent bonds, ionic bonds, hydrogen bond and molecule geometry, activity concept in elements, chemical equilibrium, dissolution, electrolyse and battery; methods to remove those misconceptions are discussed; and in this study, the method of literature review, one of the qualitative research patterns, is used. To conclude, multiple misconceptions in chemistry education, specially related to abstract subjects were determined, and it is confirmed based on the literature that the methods developed in the framework of constructivist learning theory are used to remove such misconceptions.