Determination of Retention of Students Knowledge and the Effect of Conceptual Understanding

ABSTRACT

In our study it was aimed to investigate secondary school students' understandings of some concepts about the unit of “Basic Components of Living Things” in biology, the relationship between their conceptual understanding and usable longer term retention of their knowledge, and the effect of misconceptions held by students over longer term retention of their knowledge. The results of achievement test itself imply that without any effort the longer term retention of students' knowledge fade away over time.

The second stage of our study implicates that there is negative relationship between the success level and misconceptions students held. In other words, as the success descending, students hold more misconceptions. Another conclusion we can reach from the results obtained from open-ended conceptual understanding test and interview results that students who had more misconceptions, reflected lower maintenance of their prior knowledge related to topic.

Keywords:

• Conceptual Understanding
• Misconception
• Retention of Knowledge