STUDENTS’ MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT CELL BIOLOGY AND CELL DIVISION: THE CASE OF KELAFO SECONDARY AND PREPARATORYSCHOOL, SOMALI REGION, ETHIOPIA

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 xiii 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.