Understanding Students’

Conceptions in Life Science

Narendra D. Deshmukh
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
ndd@hbcse.tifr.res.in 09869236231

KV Science Teachers Workshop November 21, 2016

at HBCSE.
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 Outline
● Science Education
● Learning & Teaching
● How we learn?
● Understanding
● Different approaches
www.hbcse.tifr.res.in

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 How does students understand
living and non-living?
sun
robot rain
fan earth moon
bicycle
water sea
car watch
split lentils
train
fungus
whole lentils
onion
seeds
egg
moss
potato
DLIPS, Part 1, pg. 24.
J. Piaget. The Child's Conception of the World. Routledge, London, 1971.
p.196-197.
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 % of 5th Graders who say alive
● Sun
● Candle
● Water
● Lightning
● Volcano
● Bicycle
 % of 5th Graders who say alive
Sun - 53%
Candle - 47%
Water - 62%
Lightning -82%
Volcano - 76%
Bicycle -36%
Reference: Stepans, J. The Journal of Natural Inquiry. Winter 1988
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 Difference Between living and
non-living
Move
Respire
Respond to stimuli
Need food
Excrete
Reproduce
Grow
NCERT. Science Textbook, Class VI, p. 93

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 ● What do you think?

● Young children often think

that plants are not living
because they are not
mobile, and many older
students assume that such
life forms as seeds are not
alive.
● Reference: DLIPS Project

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 ● Your opinion
● According to Trupti,
‘respiration means,
we take in oxygen
through nose and
give out carbon
dioxide and it is
necessary for life’.

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 ● What do you think?

Raj believed that, ‘plants

●

only release Oxygen gas

because this is
mentioned in our science
textbook’. Raj believed
that, ‘plants only release
Oxygen gas because this
is mentioned in our
science textbook’.

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 ● Your comment
● According to Tuba,
‘we take oxygen in and release impure air and
this process is observed only in animals and
humans’.

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 ● What do you think?
For Riyaz,
●

‘heart is a symbol of
love and an origin of
feelings’. What you
think

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 ● Your comment
A number of young
●

children were given a

log and asked, “Where
does the weight of
this dry log come
from? “ They
responded, “from the
sun, water, the soil,
the seed. . .”

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 What do you think?

Where does the

weight of this
dry log come from?

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 What do you think?
● Sun
● Water

● Soil

● Seed

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 What do you think?
What would you say
to someone who said
to you that the
weight of the tree
comes mostly from
carbon dioxide in the
air?
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 What do you think?
• “Really! I would wonder about that. I would wonder how
that’s possible.’’
● “I would disagree because this same volume of air would
weigh much less unless it was highly compressed.”
● “I’d say obviously carbon dioxide is intimately involved in
photosynthesis. I’d say carbon is not much of a building
block from what I know of chemistry.”
● “I’d say that’s very disturbing and I wonder how that could
happen.”

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 What do you think?
● The belief by many people that an invisible gas, carbon
dioxide, cannot possibly contribute carbon to growing
plants for making sugars, starches, and cellulose.
● The problem is that a great many people believe that gases
have no weight because we cannot feel the air around us.
● This primitive belief interferes with the learning of many
science ideas in addition to photosynthesis, such as
changes of state, conservation of matter, and so on.
● Reference: Fisher, Kathleen M, James H. Wandersee, & David E. Moody,
‘Mapping Biology Knowledge’, Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
November 2001.
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 ● What do you think?
●Salman said
that,
plants do
not respire.
They just
release
Oxygen.
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 ● What do you think?
Reena stated that,
●

‘plants used water and

carbon dioxide as raw
material during
photosynthesis and
released oxygen. So
there is no respiration
during day time. They
release carbon dioxide
in the night’.
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Identification of misconceptions

Misconceptions such as “Respiration occurs in no plant cells;

While respiration in green plants is the taking in of CO2 and
giving off of O2 during the day, it is taking in of O2 and giving off
of CO2 at night”
 Understanding photosynthesis
Many students hold the misconception about photosynthesis:
●

- plants release only oxygen and use carbon dioxide during

photosynthesis
- plants do not respire.
- photosynthesis does not take place during rainy season
- photosynthesis is merely a gas exchange process.
- the purpose of plantation is to fulfill the oxygen requirement
- there is confusion between photosynthesis and respiration
- photosynthesis is a plant respiration
N. Deshmukh. “A Study of Students’ Misconceptions in Biology at the Secondary School Level and
Development of Research Based Remedial Material”. Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, University of
Mumbai, Mumbai, 2013.
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 What do you think?
●

Interviews: Student-1, said respiration

means we take in oxygen through nose
and give out carbon dioxide and it is
necessary for life.
Student-2 believed that plants only
release Oxygen gas because this is
mentioned in our science textbook.
According to student-3, we take oxygen
in and release impure air and this
process is observed only in animals and
humans. Dolphin does respiration
through gills.
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http://textbook.s-anand.net/ncert/class-11/biology/13-photosynthesis-in-higher-plants
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/missing-carbon/
 What do you think?

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 What do you think?

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 What do you think?

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Where do misconceptions come from?
● Experience in school
– Figures and diagrams
– Analogies and metaphors
● Very common in all science teaching

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Where do misconceptions come from?
● Informal learning
– Locker room conversations (between males and
females) result in serious misconceptions about
exercise, physical conditioning, how to build
muscle mass or endurance etc.
– Television, newspapers, magazines, the Internet

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Discussion: Many students did not have lucid notion about structure and function of the heart.
The words used in Marathi for pure blood and impure blood (Shuddha rakta ani ashuddha rakta,
respectively) have added to the confusion.

Heart is a symbol of love and an origin of feelings in literature the students get confused.

Actually heart is just a pumping organ and is not concerned at all with blood purification,
filtration, and formation, such terms ‘purification’, ‘pure blood’, ‘impure blood’ should not be
used by teachers.
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 Understanding photosynthesis
● “Green plants … take in carbon dioxide and water and convert them into
carbohydrates in the presence of chlorophyll and sunlight”.

Do plants also Do plants respire only at

respire? night?

Does photosynthesis occur

in non-green leaves?
Does photosynthesis
occur in the rainy
season?

Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education.

Science and Technology, Std. X. p.120, Pune, 2014.

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 • Thank You
nddeshmukh1965@gmail.com

09869235231

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