High school students’ concepts regarding food chains and food webs: a multinational study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the views of high school students with regard to food chains and food webs. This investigation included 96 randomly selected students from three countries (32 from each country): the USA, Australia and Canada. Each subject was individually interviewed using the interviews about events method. During each interview, the investigators asked the subject a set of standard questions that was developed prior to the beginning of this study. The investigators found that most of the students from all three countries had some difficulty in providing a complete explanation of the complex feeding relationship that occurs within a food web and that some of these students revealed one or more misconceptions about these relationships.