Bilingual Students' Ideas and Conceptual Change About Slow Geomorphological Changes Caused by Water

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the results of an experiment investigating the development of elementary-school dual-language learners' conceptual knowledge about processes of erosion, deposition, and transportation caused by water movement. To elicit students' ideas, researchers asked students to answer four open-ended questions using written answers and/or drawings. Students' responses were analyzed, and misconceptions were organized in a systemic network. A semiquantitative analysis was conducted to investigate changes in students' number of misconceptions as a result of a science and reading instructional sequence. Forty-nine fourth-grade students participated in this investigation. Eleven misconceptions were identified in relation to erosion processes. The science and reading intervention, which focused on the use of cognitive strategies, was effective at reducing the number of misconceptions students held. Changes in the number of misconceptions were significant for four misconceptions explaining slow geomorphological changes based on (1) unnatural explanations, such as magical or man-made explanations; (2) accumulation rather than erosion; (3) forces other than gravity cause water to move; and (4) nonlandform interpretation of terms. Particular aspects of the intervention that could explain these changes are discussed.

Key words::

• science
• reading
• earth science
• bilingual
• conceptual change
• misconceptions

FIGURE 1: Systemic network of students' misconceptions about slow geomorphological changes caused by water movement.

FIGURE 2: Students' ideas on how the Grand Canyon was formed based on unnatural explanations.

FIGURE 3: Student's explanation of water erosion: “It is because of the circle of water.”

FIGURE 4: Student's explanation when asked about the relationships among erosion, deposition, and transportation.

TABLE I: Prior work in children's Earth processes conceptions.

TABLE II: Questions to stimulate generation of prior ideas.

TABLE III: Network of misconceptions with students' scores.

Notes

¹ Detailed description of the INSCIREAD intervention, a GSA Data Repository item and Supplementary Material to this JGE article, is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.5408/09-145.1, or on request from [email protected] or Documents Secretary, GSA, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301, USA.