The role of conceptual change texts to improve students' understanding of alkenes

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the influence of conceptual change texts on students' understanding and misconceptions related to the subject of alkenes. For this, nine conceptual change texts were developed by considering students' misconceptions and learning difficulties regarding alkenes. The participants of this study consist of 63 second year students from the Primary Science Education Department. From the sample group, 33 students were placed in the experimental group and 30 in the control group. Before and after the study, both groups were given an Alkene Concept Test (ACT). Before instruction, a pre-test was applied to all of the students to determine students' prior knowledge and misconceptions. Afterwards, the experimental group was instructed with conceptual change texts while the control group was instructed with traditional teaching methods. Although the pre-test scores showed no statistically meaningful difference between the students of the two groups, the results of the post-test revealed that the mean scores of the students in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group. In addition, students in the experimental group were better in remediating their misconceptions about alkenes. These findings suggest that conceptual change texts are effective in facilitating students' conceptual understanding of alkenes.