Resumen de Effectiveness of Conceptual Change-Oriented Teaching Strategy To Improve Students' Understanding of Galvanic Cells
Ali Riza Özkaya, Musa Uce, Hakan Sariçayir, Musa Sahin
The results of previous educational research raise some questions about the efficacy of conventional teaching strategies and point to a need for using teaching strategies that explicitly take into account misconceptions students bring to the classes or acquire during the teaching–learning process. Accordingly, this article presents efforts to develop a conceptual change-oriented instruction strategy designed to teach galvanic cells in electrochemistry. The objective is to assess the effectiveness of conceptual change-oriented instruction relative to conventional instruction using statistical comparisons. Two general chemistry classes were selected as comparison and experimental groups. Students in the experimental group received conceptual change-oriented instruction while students in the comparison group received conventional instruction. The conceptual change-oriented instruction used conceptual explanation texts and conceptual questions as supplementary teaching materials. The authors of this study designed the conceptual materials taking into account documented electrochemistry misconceptions and their proposed origins from the relevant educational research literature. It was found after the treatment that the students in the experimental group scored significantly higher in terms of their achievement in conceptual and quantitative problem-solving tests than students in the comparison group. In addition, the number of students having misconceptions in the experimental group was, in most occasions, remarkably fewer than students in the comparison group.
