Determination of 7th grade students' misconceptions on the force and motion subject based on the ontology and elimination of misconceptions with animation assisted instruction

In this research, it is aimed to determine seventh grade students' misconceptions on the subject of "Force and Motion", to categorize these misconceptions in an ontological sense and to investigate the effectiveness of animation assisted instruction in eliminating these misconceptions. The study was conducted during 2015-2016 academic year, with the participation of 52 seventh grade students that are studying in a primary school in İstanbul. The design of this sudy is the pre test-post test control group quasi-experimental design. The study was carried out with two groups, namely control and experimental groups. "Force and Motion" subject is taught with traditional methods in control group and with animation assisted instruction in experimental group. Control and experimental group students' preconceptions were evaluated with the application of "Force and Motion Issue Academic Achievement Test" as pre-test and their misconceptions were analyzed with the application of "Force and Motion Issue Concept Test" at the beginning of the study. After the instruction has conducted, the achievement test and the concept test were again applied to both of the groups as post-test. The achievement test was composed of 43 multiple choice test questions that were aiming to evaluate the students' academic success related with the subject. Students gained one point for each question that they answered correctly. Concept test was a two-tier diagnostic test, composed of 25 multiple choice test questions and aimed to determine students' misconceptions and the ontological basis of these misconceptions. Students gained two points from each question if they anwered both tiers of the question correctly. The achievement and concept tests' reliability and validity studies were conducted during the pilot application of the study by benefiting from expert view. The data of the study were analyzed with both quantitative and qualitative methods. Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test is applied in order to determine if the data is normally distributed or not. Parametric t-test is applied to the normally distributed groups in order to determine if there is a meaningful difference between the scores. Nonparametric independent groups Mann Whitney U Test or dependent groups Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test is applied to compare the scores of groups which are not normally distributed. According to the findings, it is found that there is a significant difference between animation assisted instruction applied experimental group and traditional instruction applied control group in terms of academic success and concept learning levels in favor of experimental group. In the qualitative analysis part of the research, students' misconceptions related with force and motion subject were determined, their ontological basis were analyzed and also it was investigated if those misconceptions were eliminated with animation assisted instruction or not. According to ontological view, all entities belong to one of three main ontological categories, which are matter, processes and mental states. Each main ontological category has subcategories in it. Matter's subcategories are natural kind and artifacts; processes' subcategories are procedure, events and constraint-based interactions; mental states' subcategories are emotional and intentional. Ontological categorization is the process of identifying concepts to one of these ontological categories. Students' misconceptions resulting from misplacement into which ontological category were investigated in the study. In the control group, 71 out of 500 misconceptions were determined to be misplaced into the "matter" category and 423 of them were determined to be misplaced into the "processes" category. In the experimental group, 69 out of 485 misconceptions were determined to be misplaced into the "matter" category and 409 of the misconceptions were determined to be misplaced into the "processes" category. The misconceptions ascertained in both control and experimental groups resulted mostly because of wrongly placement into the subcategories of "processes" category. In the control group, 26,76% of the misconceptions placed in the matter category and 18,44% of the misconceptions placed in the processes category were corrected after the traditional instruction. In the experimental group, 30,43% of the misconceptions placed in the matter category and 33,25% of the misconceptions placed in the processes category were corrected after the animation assisted instruction. According to these findings, it was found that traditional instruction was mostly effective at eliminating the misonceptions placed in the matter category but describing the process via animation assisted instruction was more effective at teaching the concepts related with the process. Investigating the ontological reasons of misconceptions that control and experimental groups have before and after the application, it was found that those misconceptions have come upon because of two main reasons. It was determined that these misconceptions arose from either placing wrongly to a lateral category in the same ontological category or placing to a different higher ontological category. The elimination rate of control and experimental group students' misconceptions placing into lateral and higher category were investigated. At the control group, 241 misconceptions were determined to be placed to the lateral category and 259 misconceptions were determined to be placed to the higher category. 38 misconceptions of 241 misconceptions determined to be placed to the lateral category were corrected after the traditional study at the control group. The rate of corrected misconceptions in lateral category was found to be 15,77% at the control group. 62 misconceptions of 259 misconceptions arising from placing to the higher category were corrected after the traditional study. The rate of corrected misconceptions in higher category was found to be 23,94%. At the experimental group, 225 misconceptions were determined to be placed to the lateral category and 260 misconceptions were determined to be placed to the higher category. 55 misconceptions of those 225 misconceptions arising from placing to the lateral category were corrected after animation assisted instruction. The rate of corrected misconceptions in lateral category was found to be 24.44%. 102 misconceptions among 260 misconceptions placed on the higher category were corrected thanks to animation assisted studies carried out. The rate of corrected misconceptions in higher category was found to be 39,23%. According to the findings of the research, it is concluded that animation assisted instruction is more successful than traditional instruction at overcoming misconceptions that are derived from miscategorizations into lateral and higher ontological categories. Key Words: Animation Assisted Instruction, Misconception, Conceptual Change, Force and Motion, Ontology, Ontological Categories