Evaluating Student's Misconceptions and the Causes on Direct Current Concepts by Means of Four-Tier Multiple Choice Test

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R. Aisahsari, F.U. Ermawati

2020 Journal of Physics: Conference Series Vol. 1491 Issue 1 Conference paper Cited by 2 Quartile

Abstract

The main problem commonly faced in learning Physics is incompatibility between students' pre knowledge in Physics concepts and the Physics concepts taught by teachers in schools. For example in Direct Current concepts, students have assumed that when there are two independent series and parallel current circuits, each composed of two identical electrical lamps as current loads, then the lamps on both circuits will light up at the same intensity. According to the Physics concept, however, the magnitude of current flows on a parallel circuit is greater than the magnitude of similar current flows on a series circuit, so that the intensity of the lamp light on the parallel circuit lights up brighter than that on the series circuit. This discrepancy may introduce a misconception to the students. This research aims to evaluate misconceptions profile of 30 numbers of 12th grade students in senior high school Ngimbang Lamongan East Java on Direct Current concepts and to identify the causes originating from themselves using four-tier multiple choice test developed by the author with ADDIE research design. The results show that all the students experienced misconceptions in throughout the sub concepts. The most frequent misconceptions was identified on the following sub concepts: Parallel Circuit, Series Circuit, Series-Parallel Circuit and Kirchoff's 1 Law due to wrong intuition. © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.

Affiliations

Physics Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Surabaya, 60321, Indonesia