ANALYZING OF STUDENTS’ MISCONCEPTIONS ON ACID-BASE CHEMISTRY AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS IN MEDAN
By: Harizal
Reg. Number 408131049
Bilingual Chemistry Education Study Program
A THESIS
Submitted in Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan
CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF MATHEMATICS AND NATURAL SCIENCES STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
LIST OF CONTENTS
Page
LEGALIZATION PAGE i
BIOGRAPHY ii
ABSTRACT iii
ACKNOWLEDMENT iv
LIST OF CONTENTS vi
LIST OF FIGURES viii
LIST OF TABLES iiix
LIST OF APPENDIXES xi
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Background 1
1.2. Problem Identification 4
1.3. Scope of Research 4
1.4. Problem Statements 4
1.5. Research Objectives 4
1.6. Research Significances 5
1.7. Operational Defenitions 5
CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW 6
2.1. Nature of Chemistry Concept 6
2.2. Misconception in Chemistry 8
2.3. The Source of Misconception 13
2.4. Misconceptions in Acid-Base Chemistry 16
2.6. Conceptual Framework 21
CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODS 22
3.1. Overview of the Research 22
3.2. Research Location and Research Time 22
3.4. Research Instruments 24
3.5. Technique of the Data Collection 25
3.6. Technique of the Data Analysis 25
CHAPTER IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION 28
4.1. Description of Result 28
4.2. Students’ Achievement 28
4.3. Students’ Understanding 29
4.3.1. Acid and Base 30
4.3.2. pH and pOH 39
4.3.3. Ionization Degree and Equilibrium Constant (Ka and Kb) 48
4.3.4. Acid-base Indicators 54
4.3.5. Acid-Base Titration 56
4.4. Discussion 61
CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGESTIONS 63
5.1. Conclusions 63
5.2. Suggestions 63
LIST OF FIGURES
[image:5.595.115.507.118.703.2]Page
Figure 3.1.,The overview of research planning of analyzing of students’ misconceptions on acid-base chemistry at Senior High Schools
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background
Learning process starts from the beginning and occurs in every day of human life. Human beings, especially students, learn from their own explorations
of the environment (parents, siblings, peers, electronic media, printed media, museums etc.) Consequently, students do not enter the classrooms as blank board, but they enter classrooms with a preexisting knowledge or ideas of science concepts (Gonen and Kocakaya, 2010). These ideas are logical, sensible, and valuable from the students’ point of view, strongly held by the students. These ideas may be significantly different from accepted scientific viewpoints or may be same with the true or the scientific explanation (Osborne, 1982; Schoon and Boone, 1998, cited in Ozmen, 2004).
When learning science at school students sometimes relate their prior knowledge to what teacher explains inappropriately, and hence the meanings or concepts they construct are incorrect, incomplete or ineffective to explain the scientific phenomena (Osborne and Wittrock, 1983, cited in Pinarbasi et al.,
2009). These inconsistencies between the students’ views and the scientifically
accepted views are called misconceptions (Ozmen, 2004; Barke et al., 2009), alternative conceptions (Pedrosa and Dias, 2000) (Talanquer, 2006), commonsense reasoning (Talanquer, 2006), preconceptions (Barke et al., 2009), alternative framework (Kuiper, 1994; Maskill and de Jesus, 1997), or naive conception (Reiner et al., 2000) (for simplicity, the term of misconception is used
in this thesis.) In general, these misconceptions may be highly resistant to change, and remain intact for many years essentially unaffected by classroom teaching
because these are something students believe. If the misconceptions are not corrected, new learning can be encumbered or it might not take place at all (Gonen and Kocakaya, 2010).
and visible phenomena in the everyday experiences of learners, (2) submicroscopic (or molecular) representations that provide explanations at the particulate level in which matter is described as being composed of atoms, molecules and ions, and (3) symbolic (or iconic) representations that involve the use of chemical symbols, formulas and equations, as well as every media that symbolize matter (Chandrasegaran et al., 2007). Most chemistry teaching operates
at the macro (or laboratory) level and the symbolic level, but it’s known that many misconceptions in chemistry stem from an inability to visualize structures and processes at the submicroscopic level (Tasker and Dalton, 2006). Submicroscopic (molecular level) views are particularly challenging because students must think about something abstract that cannot be seen. Therefore, many students do not construct appropriate understandings fundamental chemical concepts from the very beginning of their studies (Gabel et al., 1987, cited in Erdemir et al., 2000). In general, any chemistry teaching that can not relate these three chemistry representation properly will have great possibility to create misconceptions in students and make them cannot fully understand the more advanced concepts that build upon the fundamentals.
Identifying misconception of students is the first step for preventing
misconceptions in chemistry. The identification of the students’ understandings
and misconceptions has been the goal of many of the studies carried out over the last years (Ozmen, 2004). Some of the conceptual areas in which most studies have been conducted are chemical equilibrium (Erdemir et al., 2000; Sendur et al., 2010; Husseini, 2011), acid-base (Ross and Munby, 1991; Kousathana et al.,
2005; Sheppard, 2006), chemical bonding (Peterson et al., 1986; Coll and Taylor,
2002; Ozmen, 2004; Smith and Nakhleh, 2011), nuclear chemistry (Nakibog˘Lu and Tekin, 2006), atomic orbital and hybridization (Nakiboglu, 2003), buffer
solution (Orgil and Sutherland, 2008), solutions and their components (Çalık and
Ayas, 2005; Pinarbasi and Canpolat, 2003), colligative properties (Pinarbasi et al., 2009), and electrochemistry (Sanger and Greenbowe, 1999; Huddle and
As mentioned above, there are some topics that chemistry students find more difficult to understand. One of those topics is acid-base chemistry. The topic of acids and bases is dense with concept and requires an integrated understanding of many areas of introductory chemistry, such as the particulate nature of matter, molecular kinetic theory, the nature and composition of solutions, atomic structure, ionization, ionic and covalent bonding, symbols, formulae and
equations, chemical equilibrium, and collision theory (Sheppard, 2006). Many students rely on formulas and use their calculators without thinking. Students often gain knowledge of acid-base concepts through memorization. Students are also unable to remember what they had memorized because the topics hadn’t actually been learned (Lin et al., 2004).
Several published studies have investigated students’ conceptions of
acid-base chemistry (Huang, 2003; Sheppard, 2006; Schmidt and Chemie, 2007; Cartrette and Mayo, 2010; Chaiyapha et al., 2011; Rahayu, 2011). Sheppard (2006) found that students had considerable difficulty with acid-base chemistry, were unable to describe accurately acid-base concepts, such as pH, neutralization, strength, and the theoretical descriptions of acids and bases. Chaiyapha et al. (2011) also reported that many students also exhibited misconceptions for several concepts, consisting of electrolytic and non-electrolytic solution, ion in acid and base solutions, acid and base theory, dissociation of strong and weak acids and bases, dissociation of water, and neutralization. Given these reported issues, it seems likely that students have difficulty with understanding what is happening in submicroscopic and symbolic terms even in macroscopic term of acid-base chemistry.
Therefore, based on the condition described above, the researcher chose the research entitled Analyzing of Students’ Misconceptions on Acid-Base
Chemistry at Senior High Schools in Medan. The aim of this research was to
investigate students’ misconceptions about acid-base chemistry at senior high
1.2. Problem Identification
Based on the background, some problems have been identified as the following.
1. Teaching methods implemented tended to not relate between macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic level in chemistry properly.
2. The complext and abstract nature of chemistry potentially create
misconceptions.
3. Students tended to gain knowledge of acid-base concepts by memorizing the generalization of concepts in acid-base chemistry.
1.3. Scope of Research
In order to keep this research became more focused and directed; researcher limited the problems as the following.
1. In this research, study was limited to the investigation of students’
misconception in Senior High Schools.
2. This study was limited to XI grade students in Senior High Schools in Medan.
3. This study was limited to the unit of acid-base chemistry topic.
1.4. Problem Statement
To give the direction of this research, the problem statements in this research were formulated as the following.
1. What misconceptions did students acquire about acid-base chemistry at Senior High Schools in Medan?
2. How much was the percentage of students’ misconceptions about
acid-base chemistry at Senior High Schools in Medan?
1.5. Research Objectives
The objective of this research was to identify High School students’
concepts of acid-base chemistry. The specific objectives that have been achieved in this research were the following.
1. Identifying students’ misconceptions about acid-base chemistry at Senior
High Schools in Medan.
2. Investigating the percentage of students’ misconception about acid-base
chemistry at Senior High Schools in Medan.
1.6. Research Significances
This study was expected as the following.
1. This study was expected as reference about students’ misconception on acid-base chemistry in development of curriculum and teaching method. 2. This study was expected to be an input and information in improving the
quality of teaching and learning chemistry especially about acid-base chemistry in Senior High Schools.
3. For researcher, this research was expected as consideration material in
conducting teaching and learning process by identifying students’
misconceptions.
1.7. Operational Defenitions
Operational defenition of the keywords used in this thesis are presented as the following.
1. Concept is an abstraction that represents thoughts, ideas, senses, notions, believes or entities in order to describe categories or classes of entities and events.
2. Conception is personal interpretation or mental representations of a concept.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGESTIONS
5.1. Conclusions
1. Analysis of students’ misconceptions on acid-base chemistry topic using Acid-Base Chemistry Misconception Test showed that there were fifteen
kinds of misconceptions identified in five main concepts of acid-base chemistry namely acid and base concepts (22.07%), pH and pOH concepts (43.58%), ionization degree and equilibrium constant concepts (8.94%), acid-base indicators concept (6.15%), and acid-base titration concept (9.50%).
2. Analysis of students’ responses showed that there were four areas as the
main problems in formation of students’ misconceptions namely fragmentation of students’ understanding, problems with symbols and
mathematical formula, difficulties in understanding the context in acid-base chemistry, and problems in generalization
5.2. Suggestions
From the data of students’ misconceptions on acid-base chemistry identified in this study, it is suggested for high school chemistry teachers to give more attention to the problem of misconceptions in learning activities in class. Chemistry teachers are recommended to implement the result of this study by
identifying students’ misconception in the beginning of their class in order to prevent further students’ difficulties in learning acid-base chemistry.
Further investigations about students’ misconceptions on acid-base chemistry topic are suggested using various methods to get better data analysis.
Considering the importance in collecting the data of students’ misconceptions, it
BIOGRAPHY
Harizal was born on 03rd February 1990 in Tanjung Tiram, Batu Bara. His mother’s name is Asmah Anwar and his father’s name is Nurdin. The writer is the second child of five brothers. In 1996 the writer entered the Elementary School in SDN 010163 Tanjung Tiram and graduated in 2002. In 2002 the writer continued his study in SMP Negeri 1 Talawi and graduated in 2005. In 2005 the writer continued his study to SMA Negeri 1 Talawi and graduated in 2008. In 2008 the writer was accepted in Chemistry Department, Bilingual Chemistry Education study program, Mathematics and Natural Sciences Faculty, State
University of Medan. During the time of college, the writer actively followed some intracurricular and extracuricular activities e.g. HMJ (Himpunan Mahasiswa
