First-Year Pre-service Primary School Teachers' Conceptual Structure of Ecosystem Ecology Concepts.

Autor/inn/en	Glettler, Christiana; Torkar, Gregor
Titel	First-Year Pre-service Primary School Teachers' Conceptual Structure of Ecosystem Ecology Concepts.
Quelle	In: Action research and innovation in science education, 4 (2021) 1, S. 25-31Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	2626-9902
Schlagwörter	Grundschule; Ökologie; Referendar; Nahrungskette; Missverständnis; Grundschule; Referendar; Nahrungskette; Ökologie; Auffassung; Missverständnis
Abstract	Science education research has been increasingly concerned with students' and teachers' conceptions of central scientific concepts over the past decades. However, science teaching today should not only convey knowledge but also values and science practices in order to empower students to become responsible citizens in a world that is facing ecological as well as social problems. Thus, a profound understanding of ecology and systems thinking skills are seen as paramount. This paper explores first-year pre-service primary school teachers' conceptual understanding of ecology through the use of a word association test. Students were given four stimulus words and asked to provide five response words to each stimulus. Furthermore, they were asked to formulate a sentence related to biology, using each stimulus word. Response words were categorised and the frequency of the words was calculated. The findings show very limited understanding of the ecological concepts and their interrelatedness. Furthermore, the students showed numerous misconceptions regarding energy flow and food chain relationships. Thus our findings support other authors' propositions that students often struggle with understanding ecology concepts. The findings further imply that the instruction students receive at school is not successful in replacing existing misconceptions with accurate science concepts.
Erfasst von	IPN - Leibniz-Institut für die Pädagogik der Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik an der Universität Kiel
Update	2022/1