A Study on Children's Misconceptions in School Mathematics and School Science

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The study aims to clarify children's misconceptions in School Mathematics and School Science. To clarify students' misconceptions, the interview focused on a gap between teachers's expectation and students' reality in teaching mathematics and science, then the questionnaire type surveys conducted. Finally the clinical interviews were carefully conducted. The interview revealed that some students grasped the misconception such as the same letter does not necessarily stand for the same number concerning literal symbols in school mathematics, and also misconceptions concerning the concept of Buoyancy and so on in school science. In these interviews, subjects were carefully paired so that the two students had inconsistent ideas on understanding mathematics and science. To identify such students a written problems task was conducted beforehand. The methodology of careful and purposeful identification of subjects for the interview is one of the characteristic features of this study. The interviews also revealed the persistency or stubbornness of misconception. We surely need further study on this aspect through a longitudinal survey by confronting students with the contradictions in their responses which we could identify one of the best way to clarify students' reality.