MISCONCEPTION ON BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS,

POSSIBLE CAUSE AND HOW TO SOLVE IT

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Delivered on inauguration and appointment as professor of Biology

Jurusan Pendidikan Biologi

Fakultas Pendidikan Matematika dan Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam

Institut Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan Surabaya

Thursday, Desember 4th 1997

By

SOEPARMAN KARDI

DEPARTEMEN PENDIDIKAN DAN KEBUDAYAAN

INSTITUT KEGURUAN DAN ILMU KEPENDIDIKAN SURABAYA

1997

To the honorable

Chairman and members of Board of Trustees of IKIP Surabaya

Rector as the president of Senate of IKIP Surabaya

Professors

And to all the respected audience

Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh !

Before delivering this inaugural address, let me express my gratitude to Allah, Lord of the universe. By His mercy and grace, today I have this monumental event in my life to deliver my inaugural address as a professor of biology to FMIPA – IKIP Surabaya.

And also I thank to the audience which spend some time to attend and listen this address.

Ladies and gentlemen

I deliberately choose the title of my inaugural professorial address as:

MISCONCEPTION ON BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS, ITS POSSIBLE CAUSE AND HOW TO SOLVE IT

I hope that in the future, we become wiser in efforts of comprehending and delivering a concept about phenomena that occurs around us, in which also covers all the fields; not only on scientific field but also on the interpretations of religion. It is very important for the sake of the survival of humanity.

MISCONCEPTION ON BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS, ITS POSSIBLE CAUSE AND HOW TO SOLVE IT

What is a concept?

One of important objectives in teaching science is to help the students understanding natural phenomena, scientific principles, and scientific theories which are used to describe the phenomena. But unfortunately, some of studies show that this objective is difficult to achieve. One of the reasons why this objective become difficult to achieve is that there are a lot of phenomena which is difficult to understand; and it also requires abstract and complex scientific principles to explain these phenomena. The question is: what is the possible way for teacher to help the students understanding scientific concepts? Before discussing that matter, firstly we need a definition of concept itself.

Concept can be defined in many ways. Of course, definition between a concept and other concepts cannot be identical. Carroll (1964), for example, defines concept as “[…] an abstraction of a series of experiences that defines a class of objects or events […]”. It should be noted that word “abstraction” means a process when somebody focusing attention on taking certain elements whilst abandoning other elements during certain situation. A similar definition is also presented by Dressel (1960: 60), “[…] as abstractions which organize the world of objects and events into smaller number of categories […]”. Bourne (1966: 1), from his studies, summarizes definition of concept as, “a concept is that which exist whenever two or more distinguishable objects or events have been grouped or classified together and set apart from other objects on the basis of some common feature or property characteristic of each.” A simpler definition of concept than Bourne’s (1966) is “ […] scientific concepts are mental organization about the world that are based on similarities among objects or events. (Carin, 1993: 7).

Based on the definitions mentioned previously, we can conclude that to comprehend a concept one must be able to distinguish between an object with other objects; and a phenomenon with other phenomena. This is in line with Gagne (1984), an ability to distinguish is prerequisite to understand concept.

One of concepts in biology, for example, is concept about human or Homo sapiens. Human is different with other primates; human can walk straight, have concentrated hair only on specific part of his body, can use thumb and index finger simultaneously, and have well-developed brain. All those characteristics differentiate human with apes; generally apes have hair-covered body, longer arms, cannot use thumb and index finger simultaneously, and have less-developed brain compared to human’s brain. Human’s characteristics are varied, for example: skin color, height, face appearance, and intelligence. The concept of human is even more vivid if one points all human’s characteristic and compare them to the apes’ and other animals’.

Bruner, Goodnow, and Aurstin (1956) point out that a concept has five important elements: (1) Name, (2) definition, (3) attribute, (4) value, and (5) sample. They believe that all those five elements are essential to understand concept; and they are the focus of teaching concept.

The importance of understanding concepts is clearly visible; based on the fact that understanding and implementing concept mentioned as a part of teaching objectives in every level of education. In the high school-level curriculum, e.g. the guidelines of teaching-learning biology, it is mentioned that the teaching objectives of Biology in high-school level is:

The students understand the biological concepts and their correlations one each others […][students] to solve the problem they faced…”

(Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 1995: 1)

As stated by Gagne, Briggs, and Wager (1968), concept is ability that enabling human to perform certain thing. It means that without understanding concept in specific field, human cannot many things; probably their life will be in trouble. For example, what will happen if we cannot distinguish between water and oil, between animal and plant, between sugar and sand, between honey and poison? On the other hand the comprehension of biological concepts in bio-cellular field enable experts to perform genetic manipulation, culture tissue, perform cloning, and creating excellent seeds which is required to repair, preserve bio-natural resources, and improve the quality of human life. The advanced science and engineering we see today, depends on the comprehension of the experts to concepts in certain fields of science.

Based on this simple explanation, it is clear that comprehending biological and other different scientific concepts is very important for the continuity and quality of human life.

How to Learn a Concept

Aside of how to define concept, Gagne (1977) points out that, (1) a concepts is inference of mental process. (2) Acquiring concepts is accomplished by distinguishing sample and non-sample, and (3) a concept is understood by student if he can put certain object into proper group.

In correlation with acquiring concept, Ausubel (1968) distinguishes between “generating concept” and “getting concept”. The term “generating concept” is used if the concept is acquired by inductive mean. This kind of concept acquisition is the characteristic of researching concept in laboratory. Its main characteristic is that the concepts learnt by the student through observation, discrimination, hypothetical test, and generalization.

Many concepts in biology do not have sample to be observed. This kind of concept is called abstract concepts for examples, concept of photosynthesis, respiration, organic compound, gene, reversible, homeostatic, etc.

Those kinds of concepts are hard to learn by giving sample and non-sample. The only way to learn it, is by giving definition which formulated by its defining characteristic, sample and non-sample, and verbal explanation about the learnt concept (Klausmeier, et al., 1974). This kind of concept acquisition is called concept assimilation (Ausubel, 1968), or “acquisition concept” (Joyce, Weil, and Showers, 1992).

Klausmeier et al. (1974) proposes concept acquisition model called “Conceptual Learning and Development Model” (Model CLD). According to this model, concept acquisition occurs in four-continued stages. They are concrete stage, identity stage, classificatory stage, and formal stage. A student acquire concept on concrete and identity stage if he can use the concept to solve simple problem base on observable-environmental factors. If the student can generalize a concept in learning environment which similar with environment where he gets the concepts, then he has the concept on classificatory and formal stage. Furthermore, Klausmeiere et al (1974) stress that there are different level of cognitive process for each stages. Focusing on objects --everything that being learnt, distinguishing each object, and memorizing the differences of each object are three mental processes which correlate with concept at “concrete” stage. At the “identity” stage, aside of those previously mentioned mental processes, it is also requires an ability to decide whether two or more objects are equivalent or not-equivalent. At the “classificatory”, students must be able to decide whether two objects are two different matters or identical one. At the formal stage, aside of previously mentioned skills, it also requires ability to distinguish between specific attributes with the irrelevant one.

The common method to measure concept acquisition is by asking the students to categorize objects or phenomena into concept which they have learnt (Klausemeier et al., 1974; Gagne, 1977; Tennyson et al., 1983). This task is performed by analyzing whether there are specific attributes on observed objects or phenomena. This kind of measuring achievement in concept is commonly used in secondary school. It shows that focusing attention to special mental processes at formal stage of concept acquisition is important. if teaching is considered as series of instructional events which deliberately developed to support internal learning processes, then it also must be developed to support the students’ learning of identifying specific attributes of the then-learnt concept.

The factors which affect concept acquisition can be categorized into three main groups: (1) characteristics of the students, (2) characteristics of teaching environment, and (3) characteristics of concept (Klausmeier et al., 1974). Gagne, Briggs and Wager (1988) categorize concept into two groups: concrete concept and abstract concept. The abstract concept which learnt at school is usually novel for the students. Therefore, in order to teach such a concept, it is required to teach the sub-concept.

Studies about concept acquisition by using sample – non sample and definition have been conducted by many researchers (Tennyson, 1971; Tennyson et al., 1972; Feldman, 1971, Markle and Tieman, 1972; Swanson, 1972; Tennyson et al., 1981, 1983; Klausmeier et al., 1974). The result of those studies shows that teaching concept will be effective if the students are given a set of sample – non sample and concept definition. Those results are also supported by the result conducted by Johnson and Stratton (1966), Merril and Tennyson (1971), Anderson and Kulhavy (1972), and Klausmeier and Feldman (1975).

Although giving definition is very supportive to the student in learning concept, the definition must be formulated by using simple words (Klausmeier et al., 1974). It is also in line with what Carrol (1964) points out:

An important element in school learning is the memory problem involved in the proper matching of words and concepts. Thus the problems of paired-associated memory are added to those of the concept learning itself. For example : a students of biology has to learn not only a large number of new concepts, but also a large number of unfamiliar, strange-looking words to be attached to those concepts (p. 190).

For example, photosynthesis can be defined as, “the organized capture of light energy in photosystem and its transformation into chemical bond energy in carbohydrates (glucose and other compounds)” (Wallace et al., 1984, 11). In this definition there are terms such as light energy, photosystems, chemical bond energy, which might be unfamiliar and difficult to recognize for the students.

Aside of the words and terms used to formulate concept, the number of words and term used, also affects concept acquisition. If there are many sub-concepts which became the part, the principles which connect those sub-concepts become more complicated; thus the concepts acquisition become even more difficult.

Most of the studies about concept are based on assumption that concept is formed through abstraction of its specific attributes. In this case, Tennyson, Chao, and Younger, also Tennyson, Youngers, and Suebsonthi (1983) share opinion that concept acquisition is started with forming prototype; then, it is followed by the introduction of similarity between new samples and the prototype. They states that the formation of the prototype can be generated by introducing the students to the best samples of the concept and its definition.

The paradigm of teaching concept as presented by Tennyson et al, seems to be appropriate for learning concrete concepts in which possess observable samples. But for the abstract concepts, finding best sample would be nearly impossible. For example: the concept of energy can be formulated based on several samples. But selecting the best one is very difficult. Gagne (1977) suggests that it is necessary to formulate meaningful context for learning abstract concept. Simple illustration, which appears to the students’ daily life, can be used as sample of then-learnt concept.

Misconception

Children form their conception of natural phenomena before they learn those at school. Some of the conceptions are equivalent with the science experts’. But many of those are contrary to scientific concepts.

Since early of their life, children have built their conception about natural phenomena around them. They know the color of leaves is green; and the leaves will fall during dry season. If rain doesn’t fall for long period, many plants will shed their leaves; and eventually die. The children also know that some plants produces flower, which later become fruit. In other words, children develop some concepts

based on what they have experienced when they encounter nature. Unfortunately, not all conceptions they made, are equivalent with the biologist experts’. This is what we called “misconception”.

The concept of life, for example, is understood by comparing living things to inanimate objects. The study conducted by Piaget (1929), shows that the children tend to believe that inanimate objects also possess feeling, emotion, and will. Children also believe that the sun, car, wind, clock, and fire are aware about their presence and can sense other objects. Inagaki and Hatano (1987) state that children can distinguish human from other living creatures, but they cannot accept the concept that human is kind of animal.

In his analysis, the studies about concept of “death” on children aged from 9 -10, Carey (1985) shows that children see the concept of “death” from the point of view of human experience; they connect the concept with sleeping and the departure, separation and punishment; and they see it as yet-to finish and unavoidable thing.

The study result conducted by Sequiera and Freitas about concept of death and decomposition, shows that there is misconception on those two concepts; although the children have just been taught about those concepts. The children who become subject of this study, age between 12 -13, see death from human point or animals as the model; they correlate death with human fatigue, and cease to worked by the organ of human and animal, especially the heart. Some of students explain death by using theological or affective approach; for example being sad or not having friend. Only 40 per cent of the students can explain death from cellular point.

Many studies about misconception have been conducted on biological concept such as: life, anima, plant, cellular theory, classification, species, diet, digestive system, assimilation, chain food, growth, expansion, reproduction, bio-technology, adaptation, ecosystem, population, community, respiration, breath, and pollution. Interestingly, many misconceptions about biological concepts also occur on college and biology teacher. The study conducted by Brumby (1982) on medical college, shows that only 18 per cent of the subjects can correctly use natural selection to explain the evolutional changes; although some of them have taken biology course. Most of them explain the changes by using Lamarck theory, which states that individual can adapt toward its environment if it is necessary and it is hereditary. Another study conducted by Brumby (1984) shows that misconception also occurs on first year college who grouped as good. Brumby states half of the sample-colleges declare that human body is the main target of antibiotic. Aside of it, they also wrongly use some concepts of immunology, to explain some effects resulted from giving antibiotic to human body.

Study about concept of food on plant, which conducted by Simpson and Arnold (1982),by Roth, Smith, and Aderson (1983), and by Driver et al (1984) shows that most of the subject believe that plants get their food from the environment, especially from the soil. This study also is also supported by Kardi’s (1997), which take 44 junior high teacher asked about the concept of food for plant. Only 20 per cent of 44 teachers can give correct explanation. This finding should be concerned, because those teacher have taught biology for quite long period.

Aside of misconception about food on plant, Kardi’s finding (1997) also show there are misconceptions about food (59%), respiration (38%), population (34$), community (34%), ecosystem (94%), natural selection (57%), pollution (75%), bio-chemical recycling (93 %), and plant successive (71%). This kind of facts can give negative effects to the students’ conception about those concepts.

The cause of misconception

As mentioned previously, the students build conception about natural phenomena through experiencing and interacting with the environment and through teaching-learning process at school. Most concepts taught to them are not clearly understood. In other words, many concepts learnt by students at school are not same with the concepts believed by expert scientist. Concept and information brought by the students into classroom, can affect their learning result. The students’ pre-knowledge heavily affects the understanding process of basic concepts and scientific principal; and also affects the implementation. Furthermore, students’ misconceptions are hard to change.

Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin (1956) emphasize all five elements of concept such as name, definition, attribute, value, and sample, are very important for teaching concept. In order to comprehend a concept, all those elements have to be the focus of teaching. An important indicator that shows one understands a concept, is an ability to formulate a concept’s definition in which it is formulated based on its specific attributes; aside of general attribute. For certain concept, especially for abstract and complex concepts, it is not easy to distinguish between general attribute and specific one. The findings of study, shows that a cause of misconception is the students’ inability to distinguish specific attribute from the general one. It happens because the students usually focus their attention to general attribute; in which easier to spot than specific attribute which require more careful observation (Kardi, 1997).

Another cause of misconception on students is the fact that the students fail to understand pre-requisite concepts. The findings of Arnold and Simpson (1980, show that because the students cannot understand concepts about living things, gas, food, and energy, they have misconceptions about photosynthesis concept. Kardi (1997), from his findings, also show that why the colleges unable to comprehend the concept of system, is because they do not understand about concept of ecosystem. The colleges, who do not understand concept about population, also get misconception about concept of community.

Another factor which usually causes misconception is the insufficiency of concept sample and its variety. This condition is worse on abstract concepts in general which only has analogy or visualization in form of picture, chart, or chemical reaction. For example, the concept of photo synthesis is usually stated as the following simple chemical reaction:

6 CO + 6 H2O C6 H12 O6 + 6 O2

Chlorophyl

Sun light

This chemical reaction can cause misconceptions; by giving explanation that carbon dioxide with help chlorophyll and sun light, can develop reaction with water and produces glucose and oxygen. We would be delightful if such a reaction exist in this world; because we can produce glucose only by mixing water and carbon dioxide then adding extract of chlorophyll and put the mix under the bright sun light. Unfortunately such a thing does not happen. Glucose is not formed from reaction between carbon dioxide and water with the help of chlorophyll and sun light. The reaction that forms glucose through photosynthesis is very complex; it is not right if we explain by using such a simple chemical reaction in which usually written on most biological text book and books of plants’ physiology.

The number of relevant and irrelevant attributes also affects the difficulty of acquiring concept. Too many things inside mind always become hindrance in learning. Therefore, in developing concept, it is required to reduce the things handled by “working memory”. Misconception occurs if the students focus more attention to irrelevant attribute, which usually easier to spot than the relevant attribute (Sequiera & Leite, 1991).

How to fix Misconception

Posnet et al (1982) stress that the biggest challenge of science teachers is their effort to help the students acquire formal concepts. They believe that the main factor why the students fail to learn concepts is the obstacle that arises because the students’ pre-conceptions are contrary to scientific conceptions (misconception). In order to fix it, they suggest using “conceptual change model”. In this model, assimilation of new conception must occur, but it is more important for the students to accommodate different way of thinking; it has similar process with the new theory named by Kuhn (1970) as “scientific revolution”.

In order to make the student accommodate scientific information, it requires creating such condition in learning environment as follows:

(1) The students must doubt the truth of concept they hold. Except if the students are motivated to answer the important question or something they doubt; the significant conceptual changes will hardly occur.

(2) The new conception must be comprehended the students. If the students cannot understand its meaning, they will never analyze and comprehend the concept.

(3) The new conception must be “plausible”. The students need to identify things on new conception which matched to the conception they hold.

(4) The new concept must indicate that it is useful. The students will seriously to restructure their cognitive structures, if the information they need to learn is meaningful and useful.

Brook and Driver (1984) suggest the science teacher to modify students’ pre-knowledge and not to replace it with new information. They emphasize that learning scientific material requires restructuring the students’ pre-knowledge. Brook and Driver (1984) suggest the science teachers to start teaching from the students’ knowledge, and then help the students distinguish their pre-conception from scientific conception hold by scientific experts. They emphasize that misconception cannot be

merely replace with new conceptions; because misconception will remain, although the students have remedial learning, and tend to dominate the students’ way of thinking.

Teaching strategy suggested by Driver (1988) to support conceptual changes, which based on constructivism, has following outlines: orientation, elicitation of ide, restructuring idea, clarification and exchanges, positioning on conflict situation, developing new idea, evaluation, application of idea, re-analyzing of changes in idea.

Conceptual change model, which also based on constructivism, is also proposed by Roth and Anderson (1990). Roth and Anderson model is similar with Brook and Driver model; they have two similar outline: firstly creating problem, and secondly understanding and applying scientific concept.

During creating problem phase, the students are required to express their opinion about a natural phenomenon, compare and differentiate with their friend’s opinion, and discuss their opinions. The purpose of this activities is to create cognitive conflict in which expected to motivate the students to conduct study in order to solve the differences in the existing opinions. This kind of situation will encourage the student to hypothesize and drive them to test the hypothesis. Then eventually, the teacher gives scientific explanation to the students; so it will be meaningful to their way of thinking.

The second phase of Roth and Anderson model is “Understanding and Applying Scientific Concepts”. In this phase, the students are given chance to explain existing phenomena around them. If it is necessary, the teacher acts as model and shows the students how to scientifically explain a natural phenomenon. Aside of that, teacher can be the facilitator which guide the students in searching of meaning and answer.

Smith (1990) shares opinion that teacher can be the main problem of developing students’ scientific conception. Most teachers hold conceptions which do not support conceptual changes on the students. Smith categorizes science teacher into three groups: (1) Fact Acquisition Teacher, who see science as set of facts and definitions which students have to learn; (2) The content understanding teachers, who see science as integrated-cohesive knowledge; this kind of teachers struggle to help their students developing conception about correlation of various scientific concepts. Although these teachers have stronger scientific background than “fact acquisition teachers”, they still consider learning as process of getting and storing information; (3) the conceptual change science teachers, who see science as learning material, correlated concepts which students have to understand. These teachers are different with two previous kinds of teachers. They believe that learning is a process of developing meaning; not only just giving the students information as results of reading book and learning teacher’s explanation. In some stages of certain subject, these teachers focus their attention on things known and believed by the students.

Based on his findings, the study about science teachers, Smith (1990) emphasizes the importance of acquiring essential concepts as a determinant factor for understanding science. Furthermore, he states that to achieve that objective, teachers need assisting in developing their conception about constructive learning theories. Based on constructive learning theories, teachers cannot merely give what they know to the students. For this knowledge to become meaningful, the

students themselves must process information they get, restructure this information, and integrate it with their pre-existing knowledge. By doing this process, the information will be integrative to cognitive structure, meaningful, useful, and better used to adapt on surrounding.

This kind of opinion gives implication to the teacher function. The teacher is not only served as the source of information, but also as the one who diagnose, the one who plan teaching-learning activities, and as the learning facilitator. The success of this task demand teachers served as subject expert and teaching-designer expert. Those tasks are really difficult, but a good teacher has to possess such as skills.

Summaries

From the analysis I delivered, it can be concluded that conceptions of science, and other fields, are very important for human life. Although all scientist experts agree about the importance of understanding concept but they do not hold same opinion about how to define “concept”.

Before children start their formal education at school, they have some knowledge about existing natural phenomena around them. Unfortunately, most of their knowledge is not equivalent to knowledge hold by the experts. In other word, it creates misconceptions. Misconceptions are not only monopolized by the children but they can happen to everyone, to students, colleges, teachers, and even to the academics. A lot of factor can be the cause of misconception; such as students’ characteristics, the types of conception which still learnt, learning source, and learning environment. Teachers also can be one of factors that create misconceptions.

Fixing misconception cannot be separated with the effective ways of learning concepts. Formulated definition, the numbers and variations, the sample and non-sample, the existing prototype, can affect positively to the success of teaching concept. But it should be underlined that fixing misconceptions are hard to do. It happens because the students get difficulty to restructure the old-conception into correctly-scientific cognitive structure. It means the existing pre-knowledge can affect deeply the forming conception of new information which the students still learn about. In order to help the students forming their misconception, teachers must learn more comprehensive about conceptual-change process from the point of constructivism theory, and adjust their role based on that theory; as a scientific experts, the one who diagnose, and the experts of teaching-learning designer. Those actions indicate that it is necessary for the teachers to decide on their own, things which are their professional tasks.

As the closing, let us contemplate Lawrence Stenhouse’s words which cited by Hopkins (1993):

Good teachers are necessarily autonomous in professional judgment. They do not need to be told what to do. They are not professionally the dependents of researchers or superintendents, of innovators or supervisors. This does not meant that they do not welcome access to ideas created by other people at other places or in other times. Not they reject advice, consultancy or support. But they do know that ideas and people are not of much real use until they are

digested to the point where they are subject to the teachers’ own judgment … for only teacher are in the position to create good teaching. (p. 34)

Ladies and gentleman

Before I close this inaugural address, let me quote one of Rasulullah SAW Hadits: “those who want to be happy and safe in the world; must hold knowledge. And those who want to be happy in afterlife; must hold knowledge.” From these words we can conclude that happiness and safety both in the world and afterlife can only be achieved by possessing knowledge. According to Koran, human is the creature that has potency to acquire knowledge. Allah is the one who teach human everything previously unknown to them (Q.S. 96). Allah is also the one who gives intelligence and feeling to human; intelligence is the field of knowledge whilst feeling is the field of faith.

In the end of this address, let me sincerely thank to Government Republic of Indonesia, who thoroughly minister of education and culture gives me trust to hold position as professor of biology in FPMIPA –IKIP Surabaya.

I also thank to Chief of IKIP Surabaya, Chief of FPMIPA, Chief and members of senate of IKIP Surabaya, Professorial commission of IKIP Surabaya.

To Prof. R. Soedjadi, Prof. Drs. H.A Soeparmo, M. Sc, Drs Soerono Martoraharjo the former Rector of IKIP Surabaya, and Drs. Koespono the former Dean of FPMIPA – IKIP Surabaya, I specially thank for the guidance and direction in which very helpful for my installment as tenured Professor in IKIP Surabaya.

I also thank to my peers the teaching staff of Department of Biology, FPMIPA-IKIP Surabaya, for the cooperation which based on sense of family.

the last but not least, I also thank deeply to my parents, my father and my beloved mother, who inherit me their ability so I could achieve highest level education and academic position; and also for my family who always support me during happiness and sorrow; and I pray to Allah, so He always bless me and give me easiness, so right now I can reach this academic highest position.

In the end, this inauguration cannot smoothly happen without the help and efforts the committee who prepare everything days before. For these efforts, I in the name of my family express deep thank to the committee.

Wabillahi Taufiq wal Hidayah.

Wassalamualaikum warrahmatullahi wabarakatuh

Surabaya, December 4th, 1997

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