Abstract:
Acid-base chemistry is the dominant chemical reactions in the chemical industry. However,
most of the high school students are considered it as difficult topic and usually they had
misconception about the reaction products and their properties, pH value, H
+ ion, and OH ion, neutralization reactions and others. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify the
common misconceptions, source of misconceptions, and the level of misconceptions grade
10 and 12 of Bishoftu secondary school and Babugaya preparatory school students faced
on acid-base. The nature of the study was descriptive setting. The participants of the study
were 82 grade 10 students and 60 grade 12 students of Bishoftu secondary school and
Babugaya preparatory school, respectively. Data were collected using four tiers multiple choice test (4TMCT), open ended questionnaires, and interview. The collected data were
analyzed using Statistical Package STATA. The results of reliability alpha general
coefficient were 0.6214 implies the data collection instrument was internally consistence
and reliable. The value of the validity test correlation between first and second tiers, third
tiers and fourth-tiers, second-tier and both confidence tiers were 0.98, 0.95, 0.94, 0.9 of
grade 10 students and 0.97,0.92, 0.94, 0.88 of grade twelve students, respectively. The
difficulty coefficient ranges between 0.2 and 0.8 indicates that the used questions were
moderate. The result of the analysis showed that 13 and 12% of grade 10 and 12 students
had misconception, respectively. Furthermore, among the sample student, the pooled result
showed that 7.5% of the students were scientifically conceived, 80% of the student showed
lack of knowledge and 12.5% had misconception. Therefore, any governmental and
nongovernmental organization concerned on education quality in chemistry related to acid base reaction to enhance the understanding of the students.
