The investigations to identify the misconceptions of elemantary education (sixth, seventh and eighth grade) students about cell

This study was conducted in order to identify the misconceptions of Primary Education sixth, seventh and eighth grade students about cell which is included in science curriculum. For this purpose, a test about cell concepts was developed and this test was administered to 488 sixth, seventh and eighth grade students in randomly selected at four Primary Education Schools in the second semester of the 2005-2006 academic year. As a result of the analyses of the data, it has been found that Primary Education sixth , seventy and eighth grade students have misconceptions about cell subject. The data analysis shows that the students demonstrated a number of misconceptions about cell and its use. Most notable of them are the following: ? The cell is the smallest structure of an alive. ? It is found that the students had misconceptions about the respiration. ? The students have misconceptions about the duty of organs in the cell. ? It is found that the students had misconceptions in the question connected with the plant cell and animal cell. ? The onion cell is stated as the animal cell by the students ,and the nerve cell is known as the plant cell by them. It is found that misconceptions similar to those observed sixth grade students are also prevalent among seventh and eighth grade students . This supports the earlier findings that misconceptions are persistent and resist to change. The students response to conceptual test items indicate that at times they consider pear cell as animal cell and animal cell as plant cell.