Abstract:

Today, one of the most important goals of science education is to fulfil the students with scientific knowledge with which they can understand and interpret the world they live in. A student with this knowledge is known as scientifically literate. People are constructing their knowledge by establishing a relationship between events encountered in daily life and in school settings. The concepts of metal, non-metal, semimetal and alloy are among chemistry themes that students can meet in their daily life. The purpose of this study is to determine students' misconceptions and understanding of these concepts at different levels of schooling. A test related to these concepts were developed and implemented to a sample of students selected at random from primary, secondary and tertiary level. The test questions are two-tier, while the first part has a multiple section, the second part is open-end. Through the analysis of obtained data, the percentage of true and false answers were calculated. In addition, SPSS statistical program was used for comparisons. The results show that students at all levels have misconceptions about the concepts under investigation. These misconceptions are gradually decreasing towards to high levels of education. Based on the results, some suggestions were also presented. Keywords: Chemistry Education, Misconceptions, Different Levels of Schooling