DIAGNOSIS OF STUDENTS’ MISCONCEPTION ON THE CONCEPT OF ACID-BASE IN TWO SECONDARY SCHOOLS OF BISHOFTU, ETHIOPIA

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.