Small-Group Interview-Based Discussions About Diffused Shadow

Students' misconceptions of shadows have been studied previously. However, most studies were conducted before and/or after formal instruction. They did not provide a description of students' conceptual change during the learning process. The aim of the current research was to fill this gap and to identify students' changes in conception about diffused shadows during Nussbaum and Novick's suggested sequence of teaching (Nussbaum, J., and Novick, S. Instructional Science 11: 183–200, 1982a; Nussbaum, J., and Novick, S. A study of conceptual change in the classroom. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Lake Geneva, Chicago, 1982b). Class discussions at different stages of the teaching sequence as well as pre-and posttests of six 10th-grade students were analyzed. The identified misconceptions were divided into concepts concerning the following: (1) the nature of light, (2) the light source causing the shadow, (3) the object's characteristics, (4) the screen, and (5) the nature of the shadow. The analysis revealed that (a) students' “entering” ideas were unstable, (b) the language and materialistic view of light influenced students' ideas, (c) students' ideas were influenced by the group concepts, (d) students' interpretation of demonstrations and experiments was problematic, (e) students' ideas of the nature of light influenced their understanding, and (f) the use and interpretation of diagrams of light rays were problematic. By analyzing small-group discussions at different stages of the teaching sequence, we increased our understanding of students' conceptual change processes of diffused shadow mechanism.

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