Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary students' fuel energy preconceptions and misconceptions so that teachers may design instruction to address misunderstandings thereby ensuring scientific understandings of these important concepts.

However, students who are gifted in analytic skills are able to dissect a problem and comprehend how the parts work together. Students who score high on conventional tests of intelligence are usually very strong in the analytic area. They are good at reasoning analogically, have large vocabularies, excellent reading comprehension, and have developed their mathematical reasoning skills. These are the students who tend to be admitted to gifted programs when scores on standardized tests of intelligence are used as the criterion for inclusion. How does the thinking of highly intelligent children compare to the thinking of more typical, average-achieving children? In the area of science misconceptions, will the types of misconceptions or their frequency differ between the two groups? Perhaps intellectually gifted children will tend to build on the information they have and extend science ideas beyond their actual limits, generating more, or more-elaborate misconceptions than typical children. These questions will be investigated as children's ideas from two groups of elementary children in the same school district are compared: academically gifted elementary students and academically average elementary students. Finally, we will analyze the data for age and gender differences and compare these to previous studies to show how this investigation fits with the existing literature.

Methodology

The sample consisted of two populations of students from the same large rural school district of fourteen elementary schools of fairly uniform lower middle class socio-economic status. The first sample was composed of forty-two elementary age students in grades one through six who were selected at random from a special population of district students participating in a daylong, once a week, public school pullout program for the gifted. Students who qualified for participation in this pullout program had been identified by their teachers or parents as being gifted and had additionally demonstrated IQ scores of 130 or greater on a standardized intelligence test. In this state, students who were identified in this way as "gifted" qualified by law for special education services; the school district accommodated their education needs through this special pullout program. The second sample population consisted of thirty two students from one elementary school of the same rural school district who were identified by their teachers as being of average academic ability by consideration of standardized test scores (40th -60th percentile scores) and schoolwork proficiency. Because the interviews took place near the end of the school year, teachers were well acquainted with their students' academic abilities. No students who qualified for special education services were included in this sample. Both populations of students were of the same lower-middle class socio-economic status.

Questions

How deep is an oil well drilled (in miles, feet or in relation to the center of the earth)? How do people find or search for oil? How do they know where to look for oil? Where does the oil come from? What is it made out of? What is petroleum? Do people eat petroleum or products made from petroleum or oil? What is cooking oil made from? Tell me what people do when they go to a gas station to fill their car’s tank. How is the gasoline stored at the gas station? Where does gasoline come from? Can people find oil just about anywhere on earth?

Analysis

The data analysis was both qualitative and quantitative. A mixed methodology provides both the context of the study and broaden its implications. Interview statements provided qualitative information on student ideas and reasoning processes. Coding of student statements, as described below, provided quantitative data to numerically compare the two academic populations and to examine age and gender variables. Each statement made by a subject in response to each of the interview questions was coded as (a) a no-knowledge statement (e.g., "Never heard of it," "I have no idea," "I don't really know much about that"), (b) a statement congruent with current scientific thinking, or (c) a misconception. Some students expressed two or more ideas in response to the same question. These were counted as multiple statements. In a few instances, students expressed both scientifically correct ideas and misconceptions in response to the same question; these were therefore counted in two places on table. Misconception statements were grouped according to theme. Statements in the above three categories made by the group of academically gifted students were compared to those made by the group of academically average students. Also, responses of younger students (grades 1-3) were compared to those of older students (grades 4-6).

Discussion

Both groups of gifted and average students interviewed displayed similar frequencies and kinds of misconceptions concerning fuel energy. This finding does not support the original hypothesis that there would be significant differences between the two populations of students. A reason for this may be that fossil fuel energy is an unfamiliar topic to these students and therefore, they have a general lack of knowledge and fewer preconceptions in this area than they might have concerning other, more familiar, topics. An investigation of a more familiar topic may lead to discovery of preconception or misconception differences between the two groups. Alternatively, perhaps the data indicate that gifted or not, students of the same grade level tend to hold similar beliefs.

Conclusion

Although the study samples of elementary students were limited to populations from the same rural school district in France. The persistence of misconceptions about fuels into adulthood indicates the critical nature of helping younger students understand the scientific concepts involved. Students must understand how fuels originate to comprehend their nonrenewable nature and uneven distribution worldwide with ensuing political consequences. Students need to know the main uses of petroleum and other fuels to comprehend their impact on global relationships and ecology. Hopefully, teachers will make use of the list of common misconceptions shown in Table 3 in to plan science instruction that will address students' ideas.