Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to identify grades 10 and 11 students’ misconceptions about cell
biology and cell division, their sources and levels and to evaluate the effectiveness of biology
teachers’ instructional methods to remediate students’ misconception. The study was carried
out at KSPS, Somali Region, Ethiopia. The TTDT of cell biology and cell division was
prepared and administered to 120 grade 10 and 11 students after their prior conceptions about
the selected topics of the study were collected from students through interview and open-ended
questionnaires. Three biology teachers were observed in classroom using observation checklist
while they were teaching different topics of cell biology and cell division. A mixed probe
design was employed in this research. The researcher has identified two key concepts and 22
prepositional knowledge statements related to cell division, and three key concepts and 24
prepositional knowledge statements related to cell biology of grade 10 and 11 biology,
respectively. The result revealed the existence of students’ (grade 10 and 11) misconception
about cell biology and cell division with average value of reliability coefficient, discrimination
indices and difficulty indices of 0.58, 0.41 and 0.37, respectively. The results also revealed that
biology text books, teachers’ English language skills and biology instructional methods were
the major source of students’ misconception about cell biology and cell division. The result
showed that the majority of the students’ had high level of misconception about cell biology
and cell division. The result showed 16 types of common misconceptions about cell biology
and cell division, which were categorized into: definition of cell biology and cell division,
structures and functions, types, energy and cell cycles. Moreover, the observed classes of cell
biology and cell division lessons showed that all biology teachers did not implement effective
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instructional methods to remediate students’ misconceptions. Educational curriculum
designers and stakeholders need to design the educational materials including biology text
books and continuous educational supervisions and on-job trainings for school biology
teachers as well as fulfillment of the required educational facilities are recommended by the
researcher.
