Identifying 8th grade students' misconceptions about heat and temperature and remediating misconceptions with conceptual change texts

The aim of this study was to determine the misconceptions of 8th grade students about heat and temperature with a multiple-tier test and to remedy these misconceptions with conceptual change texts. The participants of the study consisted of 49 8th grade students of a public middle school in Şanlıurfa selected by convenience sampling. There were 26 students (15 female and 11 male) in the experimental group and 23 students (15 female and 8 male) in the control group. This study is a quasi-experimental study. In this study, pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design was used. In order to determine the misconceptions of 8th grade students about heat and temperature, a four-tier misconception test about heat and temperature was used. Conceptual change texts (CCTs) developed by the researcher and validated by expert opinion were used to remedy the identified misconceptions. At the beginning of the study, the four-tier misconception test about heat and temperature was administered to the experimental and control groups as a pretest. Then, CCTs prepared on the topic of heat and temperature were distributed to the experimental group and traditional texts were distributed to the control group. One week after the texts were distributed, the four-tier heat and temperature misconception test was administered as a posttest. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to test whether the pretest and posttest scores of the groups were normally distributed. According to the test results, it was seen that the pretest and posttest scores were not normally distributed. Therefore, nonparametric test was used to analyze these data. The nonparametric ranked ANCOVA test (Quade's method) was used to determine whether there was a significant difference between the variables. According to the results of the nonparametric ranked ANCOVA test, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the posttest scores of the experimental and control groups (F (1, 47) = 0.24, p = 0.62). It can be said that there is no significant difference between CCTs and traditional texts in remedying students' misconceptions about heat and temperature. However, when it was examined separately whether there was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores in the groups that were given CCTs and traditional texts for each misconception (KY1, KY2, and KY3) in the study, the following results were obtained. It was found that there was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores for each of the misconceptions of KY1, KY2, and KY3 in the groups where CCTs were given and in favor of the posttest scores. In the groups where traditional texts were given, it was found that there was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores for the KY2 misconception and in favor of the posttest scores, while there was no significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores for the KY1 and KY3 misconceptions. Therefore, CCTs prepared for KY1, KY2 and KY3 can be used by teachers to remedy students' possible misconceptions. KEY WORDS: Heat, Temperature, Misconception, Conceptual Change Text, Science Education