Investigation of misconception of 10th High School Students About the Concepts of Stoichiometry and Balancing of Chemical Equations Using Conceptual Evaluation Method

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry Education, Farhangian University, P.O. Box 14665-889, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Chemistry Education, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran

3 Master's Student in Chemistry Education, Department of Chemistry Education, Farhangian University, P.O. Box 14665-889, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate the misconceptions that 10th grade students have about the concepts of stoichiometry and balancing chemical equations. We selected a total of 376 students (212 girls and 164 boys) from various schools in the Markazi province using random sampling. To collect information, we administered a diagnostic test consisting of 8 multiple-choice questions. The test's validity was confirmed by 9 professors and teachers, and its reliability was confirmed by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient, which yielded a value of 0.805. We used the conceptual evaluation method to assess students' understanding, and IBM SPSS Statistics 26 software for data analysis. The results revealed that 28.7% of 10th grade students have misconceptions about stoichiometry, while 25.8% have misconceptions about balancing chemical equations. Specifically, the most common misconception in stoichiometry was related to using stoichiometric relationships consecutively, while the most common misconception in balancing chemical equations was related to selecting the starting element for balancing the equation. Additionally, we examined the impact of gender on students' misconceptions and found that there was no significant difference between male and female students in terms of the average number of misconceptions. These findings suggest that revising content of stoichiometry and balancing.

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