A cross-age study of students' understanding and their misconceptions about plant nutrition

Abstract

This cross-age study aimed to reveal high school students' and science student-teachers' levels of understanding and the occurrence of misconceptions about food for plants and plant nutrition. To achieve the goal of the study, prior to teaching a two-tier diagnostic test was applied to 200 Turkish high school students that were selected randomly from Grade 9 (n = 100) and Grade 11 (n = 100) as well as 100 science student-teachers (in Year 2, n = 100). The results showed that students and science studentteachers had a diverse span of knowledge ranging from non-understanding to complete understanding in addition to several misconceptions related to food source for plant and plant nutrition (e.g., the soil gains weight from waste products given off by the plant; water is one of the main foods that are utilized by plants; some foods such as water, mineral, and vitamins come through roots, and so forth). The possible sources for these misconceptions are discussed and importance of the results is critically analyzed in the light of the results reported from the review of literature.