Elementary Students' Ideas Concerning Fossil Fuel Energy

Forty-two academically gifted and thirty-two average-achieving elementary students in grades one through six were interviewed to determine ideas concerning fossil fuel energy. There were no significant differences between the responses of the two populations. Major categories of misconceptions encountered during interviews included misconceptions about: configuration or distribution of petroleum reservoirs, gasoline manufacture and storage, the origin of petroleum, the importance of petroleum in our society, petroleum prospecting and recovery; and the nature of coal and natural gas. Misconceptions about fossil fuels arise for a variety of reasons. Students sometimes misunderstand scenes from movies, televisions shows or cartoons, make incorrect analogies with more familiar experiences, misinterpret diagrams in printed materials, misconstrue the meanings of symbols, or confuse similar-sounding terms or words with more than one meaning. Sixty-seven preservice teachers responding to a ten-question survey to investigate the persistence of fossil fuel misconceptions into adulthood revealed many held the same ideas as elementary students, confirming the importance of addressing younger students' ideas during instruction.

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